Hi Adam,

I don’t consider high taxes a viable solution or even a route for a couple of reasons. In implementing high taxes business incentives are typically eroded, this is a natural consequence. The U.S., with an economic engine heavily reliant on entrepreneurship and possessing a daring and innovative business culture would find its economy heavily compromised from adopting superhigh tax rates.

If you tax the superrich too highly (and it would need to be quite high to achieve something like social equality — after all, Sanders has thrown around the number of 90%) they will leave the country, just as lucrative businesses do. Furthermore, the Nordic countries aren’t as progressive in their tax rates as we think. The middle and lower classes pay significant chunks of them. In the U.S., the middle and lower classes are finding themselves crushed by tax rates at present American levels. High taxes are politically unpopular and it’s not as simple as imposing them and assuming there won’t be a backlash. There are other European countries with high tax rates that nobody references when they suggest we adopt the same in America. Greece, for example, has proved incapable of funding its welfare state. High taxes do not appear to have been the recipe for success there. What’s to say that we wouldn’t resemble Greece more than Scandinavia? These are just some of my thoughts on the subject!