Taxing the Rich Is an Idea Whose Time Has Come — and Gone
The dispute over recent proposals is only the latest battle in a long American war.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. had his very own income bracket.
Source: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
If you wait long enough, every past fad makes a comeback. And so it is with taxing the rich, an idea that has a long history of ups and downs in the U.S., but has for many decades been anathema to politicians eager to avoid accusations of “class warfare.”
Yet it has popped up again. Seizing on a broader discussion about income inequality, prominent liberals like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren have proposed eye-popping increases in the top marginal tax rate. The elites gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos denounced the idea, naturally, but among the hoi polloi, there’s a willingness to contemplate a notion that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.