I'm no expert on tax policy. I'm not sure which tax plan works best, but there are some taxes I can't stand such as the death tax, a tax which Republicans seek to repeal and Democrats fight to keep alive. It is indeed clear you do not know much about taxes. The estate tax ("death tax") only applies to people worth more than $13.61 million upon their death. Regular people being outraged by it is an example of the effectiveness of right wing propaganda.

there are some taxes I can't stand such as the death tax, a tax which Republicans seek to repeal and Democrats fight to keep alive. Yeah, another one you fall for the propaganda line. "Death Tax". It's no different than anything else where you transfer money from one person to another person you pay taxes on it. If someone works for one of their parents, they still pay income tax. The estate tax is a special exemption that lets rich people keep all of their generational wealth tax free. And the exception is currently set to just over $13.6 million dollars. Only people inheriting more than that have to pay any estate taxes. And it's really a few million more than that if you do early estate planning. Wanting to repeal that is really just a giveaway to really really rich people. And remember, if you give lots of tax money to really rich people, then either you have to raise taxes on poor people to make up for it or you explode the deficit and everyone has to pay more and more interest on that forever. Further, Elon Musk for example uses tax avoidance schemes like living off very low interest loans against his stock that aren't taxable. Theoretically this should just delay the payment of taxes and even continually extending the delay the taxes should become due at the time of his death, but the high estate tax threshold means he gets to escape a lot of that and if it were repealed completely it would mean he/his family could escape taxes completely. I would also point out that the same people who think they have no responsibility for their ancestors' treatment of their slaves because it was in the past and not them often still think they have an absolute right to all of the wealth originally generated by those ancestors' slaves. There is no meritocracy in supporting a continual wealthy class who just inherit from their parents.

The American economy was strong long before there was the federal income tax, yes, there were major periods of economic downturns, but those were mainly due to major railroad company failures, hence, 1873 and 1893. Also, 1837 as the result of Jackson's bank war. The late 1800s were a time of nearly continual economic instability. There were the large recessions you mention, but also quite a few mini-recessions and bank runs and disruptive and uninsured bankruptcies. That probably didn't have much to to with the income tax, but sensible financial resulation fixed most of it. The main reason the income tax wasn't that useful in that time period is that the country was still largely an agrarian society and most people didn't have an income as we think of it today. The taxes at the time were the best way to collect from this type of productivity. The move to an industrial society with paychecks drove the change in the tax collection method and less costly, more efficient and less economically distorted revenue collection.

There are certain politicians and people who desire to tax certain industries and people. Proposing a certain tax rate on a certain industry would justify a politician's moral crusade against a certain industry. If there's an industry you don't like, propose a tax rate that you think is fair.

What industry are you talking about? How does this even relate to what we are talking about here?

I remember that the SALT deduction cap was bad for people living in high-tax states. I forget the Republicans' argument in favor of SALT $10,000 cap.

Trump liked it because it punished people in the states that didn't vote for him. But again, you're not having a very coherent thread of discussion here.