>Is the purpose of taxes to fund the government or punish the rich? Yes. Though "punish" is an unnecessarily emotional word to use to describe a secondary fun

>Is the purpose of taxes to fund the government or punish the rich? Yes. Though "punish" is an unnecessarily emotional word to use to describe a secondary function of taxation, which is to influence the structure of the economy writ large. It's been mentioned before that high marginal tax rates on top earners were almost never triggered, which is true. Instead of becoming personal income that could be used to wield undue influence on personal whims, wealth created by large enterprises (virtually the only way to accrue billions and billions of dollars of net worth) stayed within those organizations, where it could justifiably be used to raise wages and improve infrastructure, and where whatever use it eventually saw was validated by a support structure of interested parties with real sway.