In 1942, just months after Pearl Harbor, U.S. Twice in the 20th century, first during the mass mobilizations that accompanied World War I and then during the even larger mass mobilizations around World War II, progressives seized these opportunities. These sorts of dynamics create - for fleeting moments - egalitarian windows of opportunity. Average families with lives at risk tend to see no particular reason why the richest among us shouldn’t at least have some of their grand personal fortunes at risk. Wartime elites also face publics suddenly focused on equality of sacrifice. In wartime, elites need to build public confidence in government, not tear that confidence down. They’re doing their best to sow a social distrust that translates into a knee-jerk hostility to talk about raising anybody’s taxes.īut wars, argue political scientists David Stasavage and Kenneth Scheve, can shake up these ideological dynamics. Could we trust government to spend our tax dollars wisely? Pitchmen for the wealthy want us asking this question. And any one of us, still others of us without grand fortune believe, could become wealthy someday. Many of our fellow human beings, for instance, still buy into the flack-for-the-wealthy line that sheer envy is driving those who seek to tax the rich more substantially. They can also draw from a vast reservoir of antiquated attitudes about wealth and the wealthy. The wealthy don’t just have mega millions to pour into the coffers of pols who tilt their way on tax policy. What makes seizing this opportunity so important? In normal times, the British economist Faiza Shaheen notes, tax-the-rich-minded egalitarians face a political deck formidably stacked against them. We may now have a chance - in the wake of the Russian invasion - to start shearing oligarchy worldwide down to a much more democratic dimensions. We may be in, with the war over Ukraine, one of these opportune moments. They tax the rich during moments of social convulsion, especially those that accompany conflicts between nations. Societies don’t tax the rich after duly deliberating about timeless questions of what makes for tax fairness. Historical moments, these researchers conclude, really matter. Yet our contemporary don’t-tax-the-rich era has now entered its fifth consecutive decade.Įgalitarian tax policy, you could say, has hit a rough patch.Įgalitarian tax circles need some fresh thinking, and, fortunately, we have some - from economists and political scientists who’ve been reflecting on how, why, and when do societies end up taxing the rich. Can we please get serious about taxing the rich? Polls show that hefty majorities of people in the United States - and around the world - believe the rich ought to be paying more at tax time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |