I’m all in favor of a confiscatory top marginal tax rate, but unless we are committed to (a) applying the same rates to corporations, and (b) shutting down tax havens, it’s not really going to curtail the income, wealth and (most crucially) power of the super-rich.
The super-rich don’t earn “income” the way you little people do, e.g. in the form of salary, royalties, stipends, interest, etc. Rather, they structure what they own as through a series of interconnected LLCs, ultimately controlled by an entity that is tax domiciled offshore.
The top marginal income tax rate is thus ultimately not very relevant to the super-rich since they just structure their earnings so that it ultimately lands as corporate income for a Bermuda-etc-based LLC.
This is why any candidate bent on making a serious dent in our drift toward plutocracy must take on the tax haven and offshore finance problem, as I stated here
Another mechanism the hyper-wealthy use to generate cash that doesn’t produce taxable income
