from the Republican Party Platform of 1956 - something to share with your GOP friends-

[JHB]

4. Another item from that era, the tax brackets

The image below shows the 1955 tax brackets, adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars. Even more than the actual tax rates (reduced a few years later during the Kennedy admin), look at where the brackets fell:

For a married couple filing jointly, there were 24 brackets (compared to 6 in 2012):
16 of them (two-thirds of the total) affected incomes above the equivalent of $250,000 income (taxable income, not gross);
11 of those affected incomes over the equivalent of $500,000.
The top rate kicked in on (taxable) income over ~$3.4 million.

Just a reminder of what was in effect here in the non-socialist Free World during the height of the Cold War, to put in perspective the wailing claims about "socialism" these days.