Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized
world taxes
World Taxes

Sound and Fury: Americans Actually Lightly Taxed

Juan Cole 08/01/2011

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

The following chart is a slightly shortened version of the one at The Globe and Mail, which demonstrates that US tax rates are among the lowest in the industrialized world.

Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP, 2009

world taxes
World Taxes

There is another chart at the Globe and Mail showing how US taxes have fallen since 1965.

There is obviously no direct connection between low tax rates and a high rate of economic growth in various countries in 2011. Germany is doing well (maybe 3%), the US is doing poorly. Germany’s unemployment is 7%, lower than the US. The argument that raising taxes on the wealthy would hurt growth or employment holds no water.

Moreover, not all eras are the same. With the challenge of global climate change, we are entering an era where government investment in green energy may have a huge downstream impact on future economic growth and well-being. Germany is making that investment. The US mostly is not.

What you may be able to link low rates of taxation (and regressive taxation policy, which is what the US has) to is levels of social violence. Thus, Mexico and the United States are both extremely violent societies compared to those at the top of this list, in part because the government is starved by its stingy wealthy elites of funds to deal with violence, especially in poorer communities.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....