January 24, 1916 - America's saddest day

[WebbPA]

Wikipedia

Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, 240 U.S. 1 (1916), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the validity of a tax statute called the Revenue Act of 1913 ... imposing a federal income tax ...

The country has never recovered.

[j76ny]

If you read some of the Congressional debate on this, a lot of the criticism of the time are realities we live with as a norm. Never recovered indeed.

Without getting too much into the politics of it, I'd say its time to replace the income with some sort of consumtion tax.