The history of how we came to the current system by which government raises its revenue is long and filled with intrigue and an ongoing corruption of the public interest for private privilege. Sadly, economics as a discipline has served privilege and continues to do so. What too many economists have to say about tax policy seems to be ideologically-driven rather than based on sound scientific analysis. This is blatently the case with economists who work within the political parties or in the think tanks funded by ideological groups (e.g., so-called liberal, conservative, libertarian, progressive, etc.).

The last time a serious effort was made to build a non-ideological constituency to eliminate privilege from public revenue systems occured at the end of the 19th century, when a newspaper editor named Henry George took on the establishment positions in his famous book, 'Progress and Poverty'. George's perspectives were not really new; others, including Adam Smith, Francois Quesnay and Thomas Paine, had written similarly. But, George's questions about how government ought to be paid for found a global audience, and, for a time, seemed on the verge of achieving deep systemic reforms. Essentially, Henry George told people everywhere that public goods and services could be paid for not by taxation at all but by collecting what political economists described as "rent" (i.e., that portion of wealth produced by labor and capital associated with the natural advantages of some locations over others).

A handful of economists I have come to know and admire have embraced the perspective made popular by Henry George. But, theirs are voices in the wilderness, obscured by the discord that passes for debate over economic policy in this and other countries.

Am I the only listener who remembers that the $250,000-and-up earners are only 5% of the American people? What percentage of listeners is that, 10%? What percentage of these high-earners pay 35% in income tax instead of 15% in capital gains tax? Has anyone fact-checked Hubbard and compared his reliability against Reich? I should have sent this days ago.
Forget rolling back the Reagan tax cuts to 70% like www.thomhartmann.com says; the current $3T wars and the Trump-opposed $2T tax cuts of 2001 require the Truman/Eisenhower 90% income tax rates that paid off WWII and the Korean War. If that means less than 1% of the U.S. have a new maximum wage of $10M/year, consider it the counterpart of Dick Cheney's 1% Doctrine; that's a stimulus to fund the human and physical infrastructure that has crumbled since 1980's October Surprise.
Senator Bernie Sanders (VT-I) says the estate tax only affects 0.3% of Americans, not one farmer or small business. P.S. www.shadowstats.com tracks real un- and underemployment at 21%, not 9.5% or 16.5% like www.bls.gov

I believe it was Einstein who said, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome."

I love the comments here. I'm glad I'm not the only who realizes that people trading stocks doesn't provide capital investment to companies. They get their money at the IPO and of course the value of their retained stock impacts their ability to fund operations and borrow, but that's driven by their performance, not by whether people have more of an incentive to buy the stocks. The whole basis for giving capital gains and dividends special treatment has been a lie whose only purpose was to enrich people who don't actually produce anything but campaign donations.