Some scholars go so far as to conclude that such steeply progressive taxes could not have been implemented without World War I; without a similar (and at this point improbable) experience of mass military conscription in the twenty-first century, it is argued, no such progressive tax will ever again see the light of day.66
Conscription and progressive taxation
Some scholars go so far as to conclude that such steeply progressive taxes could not have been implemented without World War I; without a similar (and at this point improbable) experience of mass military conscription in the twenty-first century, it is argued, no such progressive tax will ever again see the light of day.66
66 See esp. K. Scheve and D. Stasavage, Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe (Princeton University Press, 2016). On the crucial role of war in the history of inequality, see W. Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2017).
