Why bother running a factory to produce things simply to give away to people who can't give you anything in return?
Automation doesn't occur unless labor costs are higher than the cost of automating away that job
FTFY. Lots of things can be automated that would pay a human only minimum wage, but it's even cheaper for a machine to do it.
Just because automation is happening doesn't mean people are paid well. Cost of automation goes down all the time.
The part that a lot of people did not understand was that it was a marginal tax rate increase. That means that if you made $200,001 in a year, only $1 would be taxed at the hire rate given a $200,000 cutoff. People seemed to think that once you went into a higher tax bracket, ALL you income would be taxed at the high rate. What that all boils down to is that only the very rich would feel the tax increase.
This "misunderstanding" was being pushed intentionally to scare people. It's been debunked many, many times, but keeps coming back because it's an easily understood (though completely incorrect) way to make people scared of taxes.