> Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less.

In the US at least, that’s the perception because the tax cuts get a lot more publicity than the increases; everyone know that Reagan passed what was, to that time, the biggest (at least in aggregate nominal terms) tax cut in US history, fewer know that he followed it with the biggest increase.

But what has actually happened is a series of tax burden shifts (often, downward from the wealthiest, though some have been the other way or largely orthogonal to wealth.)