Never said they were. I merely asked if taxes were higher then than now - I think corporate taxes were pretty high
The top bracket of personal income taxes was 90 percent in the USA.
Of course, the rich could then as now employ very creative accountants and great influence on Congress to legislate loopholes that went a long way toward nullifying that.
I agree with the trend of comments so far--the 50s weren't so great actually, but they were a big improvement on the previous decades, certainly for US citizens and I think also just about everyone in the world--considering that if Russians, Chinese, and even Western Europeans weren't enjoying American levels of prosperity, at least they also didn't have Hitler or World War II being fought right in their front yards either.
Also, along with fear of global nuclear war and a general right-wing repression (in the West, and ongoing (though actually somewhat moderated) left-wing repression in the Soviet sphere), there was also grounds for hope. The capitalist world economy was enjoying a boom, largely but not entirely to the benefit of Americans. The Soviet and Chinese spheres were being developed too. If only the various political police could back off somewhat and the great powers avoid nuking one another, prospects could be bright.
On the social sphere--the
Leave it To Beaver lovers are clinging to a non-existent past to be sure. But insofar as Middle America was enjoying prosperity and security, it was largely due to acceptance of at least some of the New Deal reforms as established, and making them work well.
A lot of people like things like 50's rock and roll. Well, at the time these had their enemies just as pop music does today, for much the same reasons. (Personally I like 50s rock well enough, but 60s stuff even better.) If one was a liberal in those days, the present had some hopeful signs. In many respects, if one likes the 50s one ought to love the 60s when more of these trends had borne more fruit.
The thing is, a lot of American 50s nostalgia is trying to find a sweet spot between taking things they like (like American world dominance, prosperity, and rock) while denying the very trends that pretty much brought these good things about that they hate--the decline of racism as a respectable world-view to be voiced aloud, for instance, or improving gender relations and greater sexual freedom. These things were still in early phases in the 50s and can be more easily imagined away by reactionaries. Also, the dark consequences of a lot of dragon seeds sown in the 50s started coming home to roost more visibly in the 60s--the Vietnam War, the general imposition of dictatorships on the Third World (many of which have successors that we now bemoan).
To many of these people of course things I see as unqualified good things, like the decline of racism, sexism, a greater sense of community in the world as a whole, made definite and hopefully irrevocable changes in the 1960s, and they hate these things. For instance in the 1950s, indeed until the Supreme Court ruled in
Loving v Virginia in the late 1960s, interracial marriage was illegal in more states of the Union than not. Ending that sort of thing seems good to me, but bad to them. Not to mention desegregation of schools, legalized birth control, gay rights, etc. For these people, clinging to the 50s over what came after is a vote for repression and bigotry as a way of life, and some of them are quite open about it. Nevermind that even from their reactionary viewpoint they wouldn't really like the real 50s, and if they ISOTed themselves there and crushed all opposition, they'd undercut a lot of what they do like.
Already in the past couple decades I've seen the more "visionary" reactionaries like Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich give up on pining for the 1950s and start praising 1900 instead. Soon they'll be longing for the 1850s. Actually your pro-Confederacy types are already there...