[wyager]

> In the US, higher taxes are a very controversial topic, even if they would benefit the majority of the people.

I don't think it's certain that it would benefit the majority of people. In fact, I think it's unlikely.

One of the tremendous advantages of the US (and why we're so rich compared to almost all EU countries) is that our cultural programming includes the implicit understanding that higher taxes introduce deadweight loss and other higher-order losses of efficiency. Taxes aren't as simple as "taking from A and giving to B" except in the very short term. Over time, it results in less efficient resource allocation, capital resources leaving to less distorted markets, etc.

This happens on both a personal and institutional level. The gamble you're taking when you raise taxes is that "stickiness" (social ties, pre-existing legal and technical infrastructure, procedural momentum, etc.) won't just cause your tax base to leave. However, stickiness only slows the process down, rather than stopping it entirely.

This is encoded in American culture's sense of economic fairness, which precludes aggressively shafting people with more stuff just because you want their stuff.

[slg]

When would you say this cultural identity developed? Because there are millions of people in this country that can remember a time when the top marginal tax rate was above 90%.

[wyager]

It dates at least back to the earliest Scots-Irish immigrants to the US. The wartime stuff was an aberration and not sustainable.

[slg]

What is considered "wartime stuff"? Because the US has been preparing for, engaging in, or recovering from war for basically the entire history of the country including today as we are currently engaged in the longest war in US history.

[nradov]

Obviously that's referring to WW2, when the peak marginal income tax rate was temporarily raised to 94%. That was unsustainable because, absent a worldwide violent conflict, the highest income people will just emigrate to lower tax countries.

All of our wars since WW2 have been wars of choice. The survival of our nation hasn't been at stake.

[sofixa]

> All of our wars since WW2 have been wars of choice. The survival of our nation hasn't been at stake

As if any of the world wars had the US' survival at stake. Being separated by other powers by oceans on both sides, and having enormous amounts of resources and manpower meant that the last time the US was at any legitimate threat was 1812.

[slg]

So what about when the marginal rate was over 60% in the 1930s or when it stayed at 70% into the 1980s?