First, for accuracy: the personal top marginal income tax rate during the Reagan-era was not 90%. When Reagan took office, it was 70%, which is where it had been since the 1960s. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 dropped it to 50% and when he left office it was at 28%. Basically nobody actually paid the top marginal rate because there were so many exclusions, deductions and shelters. Many of the biggest went away when the rates dropped.
As far as the corporate tax rate, the top marginal rate was 46% in the early 80s and dropped to 34% after the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Accuracy aside, the big problem with your comment is that you're conflating consumer protection with tax rates. You can make all sorts of legitimate arguments about the wealth situation in the world today but let's first acknowledge that not every profit-making company engages in the type of despicable behavior Facebook has.
If corporations were taxed at 90%, you'd see mass conversions to pass-through entities, profit-shifting (moving to overseas domiciles) and capital flight, massive deductible spending to zero out taxable income, a huge drop in domestic investment, a huge increase in debt financing, and so on.
Corporate tax is not meant to be punish businesses for harmful actions they might theoretically engage in. That's what the tort system is for, and even then, the system is primarily compensatory with punitive damages reserved for egregious conduct.
So we don't need to use tax to stop Zuck from Zucking. We need the tort system to work and, arguably, stronger consumer protection laws that acknowledge the harms of these products much the way we eventually acknowledged the harms of products like cigarettes.
> First, for accuracy: the personal top marginal income tax rate during the Reagan-era was not 90%. When Reagan took office, it was 70%, which is where it had been since the 1960s.
First, for accuracy: it was above 90% from WWII up until 1963.
> the wealth situation in the world today
"The (developed) world" is not doing nearly as badly as the US. If the US was more closely aligned with Europe in terms of inequality, it'd be in much better shape.
> let's first acknowledge that not every profit-making company engages in the type of despicable behavior Facebook has.
I in no way claimed otherwise. Perhaps read my very short comment again, more carefully this time.
Very sensible comment from HN after a long time as it became reddit-lite.