[yason]

Simply increasing taxes will educate the decision makers about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve eventually.

Taxing spending on harmful things is better than to tax work and activities because what you tax will diminish.

[lmm]

My country had a top tax rate of 85% at one point (with a 10% premium for unearned income). Society didn't collapse; in fact many of us remember that as a golden age.

[CamperBob2]

Are you referring to the US in the 1950s, as tellers of this particular just-so story usually do? If so, that prosperity came about because we had just finished shooting, bombing, nuking, and in general pounding the living daylights out of the rest of the industrialized world.

WWII wasn't about who was right, it was about who was left. To the victor went the spoils. Meanwhile, there was a war to pay for, hence the high tax rates.