Yes - and it’s not just America: there is a very clear correlation in recent economic history between high tax rates and general prosperity. As I commented in another thread:
Only really in the ‘Bretton Woods’ period - approximately the 30 years 1945-75 - was capitalism made to work reasonably for some of the world - basically by constraining it within a socialist framework (the welfare state, etc), strict regulation of monopolies, currencies, etc, and very high redistributive taxation (90% marginal rates).
Added to this, of course. it emerged that the ‘Laffer curve’ - the supposed inverse relationship between high marginal tax rates and the sums actually collected - was never based either on any coherent theory or real evidence - it was in fact just invented! In a bar! It goes alongside Sir Cyril Burt’s original justification for the 11-plus and grammar school system (for which he simply invented research findings) as a ‘factoid’ (an accepted truth we really know to be false) that has shaped right-wing policy for years and is still frequently repeated even though everybody now knows its a lie!
However, in the other thread I go on to warn…
But even then, this [the short period of relative stability and ‘success’ of capitalism] was only for part of the world, was dependent on exploitation of much of the rest - and moreover on the historic wealth retained in the developed world from the previous period of slavery and colonialism - and, I suspect, was only possible in the immediate shadow of the terrible shock of the second world war and holocaust, and the perceived threat of communism.
It may well be that when future historians look back across the whole history of capitalism from the end of the medieval period to global climate/ecological breakdown, their judgement will be that it always led to unacceptable exploitation, slavery, colonialism, depression, war - and more loss of life than any other social system in history - except for one very brief and very exceptional period after 1945.