A favorite anecdote of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan hearkened back to his Hollywood days in the 1940s and early 1950s.

“When I was in the movies, I would reach the point each year when, after the second movie, I’d be in the 90% bracket, so I wouldn’t make any more movies that year. And it wasn’t just me. Bogart and Gable and others did the same thing,” Reagan said in 1981, his first year in the White House.