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The Myth of the “Overtaxed” American and the VAT That Never Was
Part of:
Take Three: Taxes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2018
Abstract
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Keywords
- Type
- Take Three: Taxes
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
The author would like to thank Sean Conway for his outstanding research assistance.
References
1 See, for example, Kenneth Rapoza, “Are Americans Overtaxed?” Forbes, Mar. 14, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/14/are-americans-over-taxed/#384388025518 (accessed Mar. 27, 2018); William G. Gale, “Are Americans Really Overtaxed?” Brookings, Feb. 24, 1999, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/are-americans-really-overtaxed/ (accessed Mar. 27, 2018).
2 Nixon, Richard M., Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1973 (Washington, DC, 1975), 62Google Scholar.
3 Jack Kemp, “Taxes vs. Growth,” New York Times, Feb. 19, 1999, A27.
4 Rebecca Savransky, “Trump Repeats False Claim that US is the Highest Taxed Nation in the World,” The Hill, Oct. 10, 2017, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/354729-trump-repeats-false-claim-that-us-is-the-highest-taxed-nation-in-the (accessed Mar. 27, 2018).
5 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Revenue Statistics - OECD Countries Comparative Tables,” last modified Nov. 30, 2016, Paris: OECD.
6 Ibid.
7 Bender, Thomas, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, CA, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hodgson, Godfrey, The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven, CT, 2009)Google Scholar.
8 Kato, Junko, Regressive Taxation and the Welfare State: Path Dependence and Policy Diffusion (Cambridge, UK, 2010)Google Scholar. In this sense, the central question of “Why no VAT in the U.S.?” may be a subset of the classic Werner Sombart question, “Why no socialism in the U.S.?” Sombart, Werner, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?, trans. Hocking, Patricia M. and Husbands, C. T. (1906; White Plains, NY, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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15 Ibid., 553. It is one of the interesting ironies of history that an American political economist was one of the intellectual originators of a levy that the United States continues to reject.
16 Ibid., 554.
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20 Savransky, “Trump Repeats False Claim.”