In today's social climate of acknowledged and growing inequality why are there not greater
efforts to tax the rich? In this wide-ranging and provocative book Kenneth Scheve and David
Stasavage ask when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens¿and their answers may
surprise you. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because
inequality is high or rising¿they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the
state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth
century when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass
warfare. Today as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization such arguments
are no longer persuasive.
