Is that not also the best way to raise government revenues? Ronald Reagan had the wealthy paying more in tax revenues and also paying a greater proportion of all the income taxes paid a year than ever before — and liking it. They were prospering, and workers and the poor were moving up briskly in income and benefits. President Reagan saw to it that the public equilibrium was win-win. 

Reagan concentrated on making America a creative society, favouring invention and entrepreneurship. Capital gains taxes were cut. Larger pools of venture capital were created than ever before. All sorts of new technological breakthroughs brought unheard-of goods to market: personal computers, fax machines, cellphones, fibre optics, gene therapies and many more. The nation moved out of the Age of Mechanics and into the Age of Electronics. 

Government did not invent these products. Brilliant individuals did — Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and a legion of others. President Obama thinks, against the evidence, that governments can routinely invest and innovate (see his chimerical plans for new "green industries" and "green jobs", at government's beck and call). Under Reagan and Clinton, private invention proved an infinitely shrewder revolutionary course.

Humans are not angels, and so of course there came in due time the historical quotient of abuses, frauds, and new ways gone wild, for which Enron, Fannie Mae, AIG, and other disgraced names may stand forever. Periods of human creativity have always brought chiaroscuro effects of dark cumulus clouds and brilliant shafts of light. 

Reagan and Clinton prompted the greatest, most long-lasting burst of prosperity America (and perhaps the world) has ever seen. The US added to its own economy in those years new value equivalent to the entire economy of Germany. A higher proportion of adults were working for pay than ever before.