You hear about the prosperity under high taxes, but were these taxes actually bringing in more money % gdp relative to today? Sorry, I am a high school student who dosen't have a complete grasp.
Given the economic boom across the 1950s, I'd like to ask the same question about Eisenhower (91% top rate)
You can see a graph of federal tax revenues as a share of GDP at FRED. The data points you're looking for are that when the top marginal rate went up, taxes as a share of GDP rose from 3.23% to 7.72%, so yes, tax revenue went up.
By the end of WWII, total revenue had risen to 19.79%, and it has fluctuated between that number and 14.45% ever since.
My understanding is that there were many more deductions and loopholes available then so that no one actually paid the 90%+ tax rate. This was discussed in this previous post;
And in this article it references:
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/AEEC9CAC8F773DD7852579C20073FD36?OpenDocument
The Tax Policy Center publishes figures on taxes relative to GDP from 1934 to 2020 (estimates into the future). Income taxes tend to be volatile, particularly on the richest, but they were about 1% of GDP in the 1930s, 7% of total GDP in the 1950s, and about 7% so far in the 2010s (actual data, that is, leaving aside the projections).
So the answer to your question looks like no, the 94% rate didn't actually bring in more revenue as a share of GDP than the current system.
Note: how much of this is wriggling through loopholes versus how much it is due to explicit design making for much lower taxes on the rest of the population is beyond me. Particularly if we don't have a strict definition of loopholes.