Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two

by Hanzi Freinacht

In the US, for instance, income taxes went up dramatically from 1935 (14.6%) to 1940 (40.7%), due to the war effort. After the war taxes stayed at that level, even slowly increasing (by 2015 it was 46.5%).[30] What you see here is a vast expansion of the capacity of the state to collect taxes in an orderly fashion over longer periods of time—earlier forms of states had simply not permeated the economic life of society to any comparable extent. Also, the economies were much larger, so the de facto revenues were increased by powers of ten. What, then, is this increased revenue used for? Enter the minions of the welfare state: social workers, psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, public health officials, urban planners, more doctors and nurses and assistant nurses, dentists, accountants, economists, political scientists, public relations experts, employment counselors, more teachers, liberal professors—and, of course, administrators, administrators, administrators.