Remember a few months ago when Glenn Beck wept while remembering the America he grew up in? It was an America with a large middle class. A middle class that could afford two cars, a home, and send their kids to college. A happy and BIG middle class. Well part of those "simpler times" was a top tax bracket of 77% in 1964 (the year Beck was born). It hovered around 70% until Reagan started the destruction of the middle class in 1981. History of US Taxes.