> As an aside, US had a high tax regime and state-funded research during much of the Cold War, so the victory doesn't necessarily validate a lot of the libertarian rhetoric
That isn't true, taxes has remained constant since ww2. The tax distribution might have changed, but the total amount collected hasn't changed much. Can see the curve looks about the same as always. The marginal tax rate barely matters for total taxes collected since there are so few rich people.
This is an interesting point. But the spikes in revenue when tax policy changes indicates sensitivity. Further, that there are other countries with wildly different tax revenues as of GDP implies that there is lot of scope for change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ta...
But in the US itself, if it is true that high tax regimes(for both income and corporate tax) did not prevent dynamism in the economy (because of what Hauser observed or otherwise), that would be an interesting to note. One analysis I read, in Jacobin - a pro-socialist magazine, was that the critical difference was that in the US, companies were allowed to fail, whereas in the USSR failures continued due to political reasons and absorbed a lot of resources.
That isn't true, taxes has remained constant since ww2. The tax distribution might have changed, but the total amount collected hasn't changed much. Can see the curve looks about the same as always. The marginal tax rate barely matters for total taxes collected since there are so few rich people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law