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. Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. 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. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.

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. Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. 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. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.

A number of recent events in the United States attest to a "globalization backlash" in opposition to continued liberalization of trade, foreign direct investment, and immigration. This backlash has been commonly characterized as reflecting the interests of small groups whose diverse agendas have very little connection, if any, to the economic consequences of policy liberalization.

The authors of this book argue that this characterization is wrong. The backlash reflects widespread skepticism among US citizens about globalization, and these perceptions seem to be closely connected to the labor-market pressures that globalization may be imparting on US workers. The empirical case for the book's argument is based on three key findings. First, a wide range of public opinion surveys indicates that US citizens recognize both the costs and benefits of integration with the world economy, but they tend to weigh the costs more than the benefits. Second, these policy preferences cut most strongly across labor-market skills. Less-skilled workers are much more likely to oppose freer trade and immigration than their more-skilled counterparts. Third, this skills-preferences gap may reflect very different wage-growth levels across skill groups in the US labor market since the early 1970s. Less-skilled US workers -- a group that still constitutes the majority of the US labor force -- have had close to zero or even negative real wage growth and have also seen sharp declines in their wages relative to more-skilled workers.

While concerns about the impact of globalization on the environment, human rights, and other issues are an important part of the politics of globalization, it is the link betweenpolicy liberalization, worker interests, and individual opinions that forms the foundation for the backlash against liberalization in the United States.