Taxing the Rich

In today's social climate of acknowledged and growing inequality, why are there not greater efforts to tax the rich In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage ask when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens - and their answers may surprise you. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising - they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such arguments are no longer persuasive.