The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

In summary, as Piketty and Saez argue, a significant reason for the Great Convergence is “the creation and the development of the progressive income tax (and of the progressive estate tax and corporate income tax).”103 Moreover, Emmanuel Saez and his colleagues have pointed out the interesting fact that there is a strong correlation between tax progressivity and pre-tax income equality. In other words, it is not simply that high taxes lop off top incomes, but that the determination of the pre-tax income distribution and the determination of tax progressivity are somehow intertwined, perhaps because both are responding in part to the same external factor or perhaps for some other reason.104 Be that as it may, our brief review of long-run changes in the progressivity of American taxes suggests that underneath the surface of party platforms and tax lobbyists and tax-writing committees and revenue officials in thousands of jurisdictions across the country a broad century-long ebb and flow of egalitarianism was at work.