> Wondering why raising higher-bracket income tax is such a problem Economists don’t love income taxes, and they really don’t love investment/capital gains tax

> Wondering why raising higher-bracket income tax is such a problem Economists don’t love income taxes, and they really don’t love investment/capital gains taxes (see the NPR article I linked).[1] The bigger problem is what you mean by “higher-bracket income tax.” 60% of all income is earned by the top 40% outside the top 1%: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:142;series:Net%20worth;demographic:income;population:all;units:shares https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr.... To have the kind of welfare state the U.S. has, you need to raise taxes on those people a lot. But that’s politically impossible. In 40 years, we never managed to undo the bulk of Reagan’s tax cuts. If you’re not willing to raise the rates on more than half your potential tax base, then you’ll need to do very steep hikes on the top 1%. Or you need to explore things like wealth taxes and taxing unrealized capital gains, which economists really hate. The European countries realized that in a globalized economy, you have to be competitive on business and investment taxes. That’s why they heavily tax the middle class, including with consumption taxes. [1] They don’t love tariffs either. But tariffs implicate concerns about foreign relations that are basically outside the scope of economics. The economic models simply don’t factor in the political risk of outsourcing all your steel production to a potential enemy. That’s why nearly every developed country ignores the economic consensus when it comes to things like agricultural subsidies. The political risk of not being food sufficient simply outweighs the economic downside.