> Julian Limberg, a co-author of the study and a lecturer in public policy at King's College London, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. "In fact, if we look ba

> Julian Limberg, a co-author of the study and a lecturer in public policy at King's College London, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. "In fact, if we look back into history, the period with the highest taxes on the rich – the postwar period – was also a period with high economic growth and low unemployment." You can't really compare the present time to the post-war period, especially in the case of the United States. Basically, post-war USA had a monopoly in industrialization. Great Britain, France, Germany, USSR, Japan had all had their industry literally blown up. China had undergone a huge civil war and invasion and occupation by the Japanese. India was just emerging from centuries of British colonialism which basically exploited its natural resources. In addition, in the USA there was rampant and overt discrimination and harassment against women. There was open racism and segregation. So if you were a white male, your skills were desperately needed as the US now supplied the industrial output for a huge chunk of the world's population. Even in Europe, a generation of males had been killed in two world wars. There was a huge labor shortage. And especially for Western Europe, with the Marshall Plan, the US was pumping in loads of cash to enable industrialization to face a perceived Soviet threat. It all came together to create a very high demand on labor, and as such allowed labor to claim a high proportion of the value generated. Those were the days where you could have one man with a high school education, support an entire family in middle class lifestyle with a detached house and yard. Those post-ware days are long gone, and no tax policy will bring them back. The rest of world is industrializing. Globalization is happening with the world getting flatter. A larger percentage of the population is entering the work force.