My dad made around a quarter million a year as an airline pilot and was unable to make use of tax deductions to avoid the 75% taxes. When Reagan did his thing my dad's tax rate went down to around 33% or something like that. My dad loved to go around town bragging about his money and his income. When Reagan's tax cut gave him what amounted to roughly doubling his income he made sure everyone within a radius of five miles or so knew about that. His take home pay went from roughly $65k to $165k and he couldn't stop talking about that. And your point is some population level statistics make that into something that doesn't count. Maybe you need to take a walk and talk to some people to get a clearer idea of how people think about all this?