Hi tkc,
I understand why they wish it to be true. Muscular individualism is a theme of what makes the US unique. In many ways, this is a good thing.
But let's not pretend it is virtuous in ways that it isn't. In terms of tax policy, the narrow contribution of people on upper incomes results in inequality, it does not lead to poor people being better off or having more opportunities than they might otherwise, it reduces government income which means there's less money to build common infrastructure, to spend on public goods and to invest in long run assets and it does not lead to social mobility (in which the US no longer performs exceptionally). Unequal societies tend to be volatile ones. They tend also to be unhappy ones. Old Tom Jefferson would doubtless be troubled.
The diffusion of income under a non-extreme type of progressive tax policy likely leads to a kind of socially broad economy, as with more income spread amongst different groups, entrepreneurs will be able to pursue avenues of opportunity aimed at all classes, rather than only at the wealthiest class. And of course, a society in which opportunity and wealth is spread around will tend to be a bit happier.
But low taxes on upper income individuals does mean that wealthy people get to keep more of their income, which feels good to them personally, and it probably means there are more jobs for companies supplying such people with luxury goods (spare pairs of cowboy boots made in China, for instance). So some people get to be happy under this model, even as bridges collapse, oil platforms explode, the unemployed suffer, and the children of the poor die because their parents cannot afford insurance. So there are benefits.
Of course, some are a little concerned at the disparity in this portrait of pitiless libertarianism, at its miserable downside consequences. Which is why, I guess, it is SO necessary for those who might otherwise be consumed with guilt to have a theory which makes them think they are acting virtuously. So they imagine those sparrows picking at horse manure are happy little creatures. And with hard work, one day those darling, little, thrifty sparrows will grow into big, old horses. The equine version of the American Dream.
No one intends that the US should run a socialist economy. Between the pole of selfish disregard for others and forced equality, there exist all kinds of temperate climbs in which the market economy operates within a state which isn't too big and isn't to small - but which, by democratic means - we try to make a size that is just right. Give unto Caesar a portion of your income sufficient to permit Caesar to provide a robust and verdant, but not a confiscatory, state, as someone once maybe meant to say.
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