Krugman: One point Piketty makes is that the modern notion that redistribution and “penalizing success” is un- and anti-American is completely at odds with our country’s actual history. One subsection in Piketty’s book is titled “Confiscatory Taxation of Excess Incomes: An American Invention”; he shows that America actually pioneered very high taxes on the rich: Why was this the case? Piketty points to the American egalitarian ideal, which went along with fear of creating a hereditary aristocracy. High taxes, especially on estates, were motivated in part by “fear of coming to resemble Old Europe.” Among those who called for high estate taxation on social and political grounds was the great economist Irving Fisher. Just to reemphasize the point: during the Progressive Era, it was commonplace and widely accepted to support high taxes on the rich specifically in order to keep the rich from getting richer -- a position that few people in politics today would dare espouse. Many people nowadays imagine that redistribution and high taxes on the rich are antithetical to American ideals, indeed practically communism. They have no idea (and wouldn’t believe) that redistribution is in reality as American as apple pie.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 02:22:23 +0000
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