[Gibbon1]

> rather than taxes being a "necessary evil" policy to pay for some other good, they can actually be reconstrued as positive goods in and of themselves: to price externalities (pollution tax) or discourage behavior (sin tax), etc.

You can think of the very high marginal income taxes prior to Reagan, even higher prior to JFK as 'sin taxes'. People opposed to high marginal tax rates like to point out that those high taxes didn't produce more revenue. But MMT thoery would tell you revenue was never the point. The point was to discourage people with the power to divert money into their own pockets from doing so.