Simpson:"Tax increases are necessary"

[opebo]

what was the %GDP of federal income tax in jan 1981 compared to jan 1989?

Fiscal Years 1980 to 2016         
Total Direct Revenue      Total Direct Revenue -fed   
      pct GDP   
1980      18.55   
1981      19.17   
1982      18.99   
1983      16.99   
1984      16.95   
1985      17.4   
1986      17.25   
1987      18.04   
1988      17.83   
1989      18.08   

so the economy boomed while federal taxes shrank....just as I thought it did.  the 1986 tax reform took away deductions for second mortgages, which is probably why you see an increase of ~1% following 1986

Two points regarding that - firstly, the economy during the 1980s was terrible (though obviously better than now), and secondly, a drop from 18.55% to 18.08% is hardly a major shrinkage of taxation.  If you'll notice, the percentage of taxation has shrunk far more from 2000 to the present, and the economy has totally collapsed.

The fact is of course that taxation has almost no bearing on the economy, particularly taxation of the wealthy.

[opebo]

yes, 20 years of boom (interrupted only by the mini-recession of 90) did eventually bring it back to even, but it took the ending of the cold war (credit Reagan), low inflation (credit Reagan), a Congress that was against giving money to those unwilling to work (credit Clinton being a total joke during his first two years), and hundreds of billions of dollars of tax revenue PER YEAR of short term capital gains to bring it into surplus.

But, since then, many things ignored during the preceding 40 years have come home to roost:  the ponzi scheme of social security and medicare (blame both Dems and GOP), loaning money to those unable to pay it back (sub prime mortgages, blame Dems - which STILL hasnt been fixed),

Dude, you have it precisely backwards - the 80s and the 90s undermined the prosperity established by Keynesian redistributionist economics over the previous five decades, leading to the total collapse of the 21st century.