The Income Tax and the Progressive Era

The Income Tax and the Progressive Era PDF

Author: John D. Buenker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-28

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0429954794

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This book, first published in 1985, investigates the enactment of the federal income tax as a case study of an important Progressive Era reform. It was a critical issue that likely divided people along socioeconomic lines, thus helping to provide insight into the debate over the ‘class origins’ of the reformist movement.

The Price of Progress

The Price of Progress PDF

Author: R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2003-05-01

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0801875897

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Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, twin revolutions swept through American business and government. In business, large corporations came to dominate entire sectors and markets. In government, new services and agencies, especially at the city and state levels, sprang up to ameliorate a broad spectrum of social problems. In The Price of Progress, R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson offers a fresh analysis of therelationship between those two revolutions. Using previously unexploited data from the annual reports of state treasurers and comptrollers, he provides a detailed, empirical assessment of the goods and services provided to citizens, as well as the resources extracted from them, by state governments during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.Focusing on New York, Massachusetts, California, and Kansas, but including data on 13 other states, his comparative study suggests that the "corporate state" originated in tax policies designed to finance new and innovative government services. Business and government grew together in a surprising and complex fashion. In the late nineteenth century, services such as mental health care for the needy and free elementary education for all children created new strains on the states' old property tax systems. In order to pay for newly constructed state asylums and schools, states experimented for the first time with corporate taxation as a source of revenue, linking state revenues to the profitability of industries such as railroads and utilities. To control their tax bills, big businessesintensified lobbying efforts in state legislatures, captured important positions in state tax bureaus, and sponsored a variety of government-efficiency reform organizations. The unintended result of corporate taxation—imposed to allow states to fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens—was the creation of increasingly intimate ties between politicians, bureaucrats, corporate leaders, and progressive citizens. By the 1920s, a variety of "corporate states" had proliferated across the nation, each shaped by a particular mix of taxation and public services, each offering a case study in how the business of America, as President Calvin Coolidge put it, became business.

Making the Modern American Fiscal State

Making the Modern American Fiscal State PDF

Author: Ajay K. Mehrotra

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 1107043921

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Making the Modern American Fiscal State chronicles the rise of the US system of direct and progressive taxation.

The Great Tax Wars

The Great Tax Wars PDF

Author: Steven R. Weisman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2004-10-26

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0743243811

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A major work of history, The Great Tax Wars is the gripping, epic story of six decades of often violent conflict over wealth, power, and fairness that gave America the income tax. It's the story of a tumultuous period of radical change, from Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War through the progressive era under Theodore Roosevelt and ending with Woodrow Wilson and World War I. During these years of upheaval, America was transformed from an agrarian society into a mighty industrial nation, great fortunes were amassed, farmers and workers rebelled, class war was narrowly averted, and America emerged as a global power. The Great Tax Wars features an extraordinary cast of characters, including the men who built the nation's industries and the politicians and reformers who battled them -- from J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie to Lincoln, T.R., Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene Debs. From their ferocious battles emerged a more flexible definition of democracy, economic justice, and free enterprise largely framed by a more progressive tax system. In this groundbreaking book, Weisman shows how the ever controversial income tax transformed America and how today's debates about the tax echo those of the past.

America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1917

America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1917 PDF

Author: Lewis L. Gould

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-14

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1000342018

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Now in its second edition, America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1917 provides a readable, analytical narrative of the emergence, influence, and decline of the spirit of progressive reform that animated American politics and culture around the turn of the twentieth century. Covering the turbulent 1890s to the American entry into World War I, the text examines the political, social, and cultural events of a period which set the agenda for American public life during the remainder of the twentieth century. This new edition places progressivism in a transatlantic context and gives more attention to voices outside the mainstream of party politics. Key features include: A clear account of the continuing debate in the United States over the role of government, citizenship, and the pursuit of social justice A full examination of the impact of reform on women and minorities A rich selection of documents that allow the historical actors to communicate with today’s readers An extensive, updated bibliography providing a valuable guide to additional reading and research Based on the most recent scholarship and written to be read by students, this book will be of interest to students of American History and Political History.

Taxing the Rich

Taxing the Rich PDF

Author: Kenneth Scheve

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0691178291

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A groundbreaking history of why governments do—and don't—tax the rich In today's social climate of acknowledged and growing inequality, why are there not greater efforts to tax the rich? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage ask when and why countries tax their wealthiest citizens—and their answers may surprise you. Taxing the Rich draws on unparalleled evidence from twenty countries over the last two centuries to provide the broadest and most in-depth history of progressive taxation available. Scheve and Stasavage explore the intellectual and political debates surrounding the taxation of the wealthy while also providing the most detailed examination to date of when taxes have been levied against the rich and when they haven't. Fairness in debates about taxing the rich has depended on different views of what it means to treat people as equals and whether taxing the rich advances or undermines this norm. Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don't tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy. Progressive taxation saw its heyday in the twentieth century, when compensatory arguments for taxing the rich focused on unequal sacrifice in mass warfare. Today, as technology gives rise to wars of more limited mobilization, such arguments are no longer persuasive. Taxing the Rich shows how the future of tax reform will depend on whether political and economic conditions allow for new compensatory arguments to be made.

The Progressives' Century

The Progressives' Century PDF

Author: Stephen Skowronek

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 0300204841

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Chapter 20. How the Progressives Became the Tea Party's Mortal Enemy: Networks, Movements, and the Political Currency of Ideas -- Chapter 21. What Is to Be Done? A New Progressivism for a New Century -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era PDF

Author: Murray Newton Rothbard

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2017-10-06

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 1610166779

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Rothbard's posthumous masterpiece is the definitive book on the Progressives. It will soon be the must read study of this dreadful time in our past. — From the Foreword by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano The current relationship between the modern state and the economy has its roots in the Progressive Era. — From the Introduction by Patrick Newman Progressivism brought the triumph of institutionalized racism, the disfranchising of blacks in the South, the cutting off of immigration, the building up of trade unions by the federal government into a tripartite big government, big business, big unions alliance, the glorifying of military virtues and conscription, and a drive for American expansion abroad. In short, the Progressive Era ushered the modern American politico-economic system into being. — From the Preface by Murray N. Rothbard

Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction

Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction PDF

Author: Walter Nugent

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0199746559

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After decades of conservative dominance, the election of Barack Obama may signal the beginning of a new progressive era. But what exactly is progressivism? What role has it played in the political, social, and economic history of America? This very timely Very Short Introduction offers an engaging overview of progressivism in America--its origins, guiding principles, major leaders and major accomplishments. A many-sided reform movement that lasted from the late 1890s until the early 1920s, progressivism emerged as a response to the excesses of the Gilded Age, an era that plunged working Americans into poverty while a new class of ostentatious millionaires built huge mansions and flaunted their wealth. As capitalism ran unchecked and more and more economic power was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a sense of social crisis was pervasive. Progressive national leaders like William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as muckraking journalists like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and social workers like Jane Addams and Lillian Wald answered the growing call for change. They fought for worker's compensation, child labor laws, minimum wage and maximum hours legislation; they enacted anti-trust laws, improved living conditions in urban slums, instituted the graduated income tax, won women the right to vote, and laid the groundwork for Roosevelt's New Deal. Nugent shows that the progressives--with the glaring exception of race relations--shared a common conviction that society should be fair to all its members and that governments had a responsibility to see that fairness prevailed. Offering a succinct history of the broad reform movement that upset a stagnant conservative orthodoxy, this Very Short Introduction reveals many parallels, even lessons, highly appropriate to our own time. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.