Yeah but is someone making $6k a month in the top bracket in these places?

No, but as a contractor you have to pay the full payroll tax (15%) + all the other SS / medicare costs (usually comes to about 2-3%), plus income tax (progressive and varies, but for this bracket is probably federal 15-20%, and up to 10% state). So, add it all up, and it's ~40-45%. Then they have to cover their own health insurance, which again, depends on state, but could be 400-700/mo. So yeah, it's easy to end up with half your money gone with each pay check.

There are cities which take their own cut and then you can also have school income taxes. I wonder if any counties have an income tax.

$6k/mo ($72k/yr) is a marginal tax rate of ~13% in the US. Combined w/ FICA (self-employed), you'd be looking at ~25%.

Also, no benefits being deducted in this case.

ok but he's only making $72,000 a year pre-tax. He's not even close to being in the top tax bracket in the US.