We Are Better Than This — Kleinbard

Ed Kleinbard’s book starts with a free-market slant (much of the following is paraphrased):

 Private enterprise ≈ path to greater national wealth and is conducive to the preservation of personal liberties.

And doesn’t oppose regressive taxes:

 Surprisingly, the progressivity of tax rates is negatively correlated with the reduction in inequality a country achieves.

But moves on to blast anti-tax hysteria:

The strand of contemporary American political thought that defines itself through its hatred of taxation is narcissistic self-pleading wrapped in a flimsy sheath of economic lingo.

The declining marginal utility of income theory does not work. The affluent clients with whom I worked loved money.

Confusion of personal financial freedom with society’s political freedoms . . . distasteful and un-American.

There is a clear positive correlation between the size of a country’s tax collections and its success at reducing inequality.