Page 70 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

sound finances. Good government is the difference between living
and dying”. [65]

One of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe
and America is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power
of the state. It’s always been the case and there is no reason why
it should be different with the COVID-19 pandemic. Historians
point to the fact that the rising fiscal resources of capitalist

countries from the 18th century onwards were always closely
associated with the need to fight wars, particularly those that took
place in distant countries and that required maritime capacities.

Such was the case with the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763,
described as the first truly global war that involved all the great
powers of Europe at the time. Since then, the responses to major
crises have always further consolidated the power of the state,

starting with taxation: “an inherent and essential attribute of
sovereignty belonging as a matter of right to every independent
government”. [66] A few examples illustrating the point strongly
suggest that this time, as in the past, taxation will increase. As in

the past, the social rationale and political justification underlying
the increases will be based upon the narrative of “countries at
war” (only this time against an invisible enemy).

France’s top rate of income tax was zero in 1914; a year after
the end of World War I, it was 50%. Canada introduced income

tax in 1917 as a “temporary” measure to finance the war, and then
expanded it dramatically during World War II with a flat 20%
surtax imposed on all income tax payable by persons other than

corporations and the introduction of high marginal tax rates (69%).
Rates came down after the war but remained substantially higher
than they had been before. Similarly, during World War II, income
tax in America turned from a “class tax” to a “mass tax”, with the
number of payers rising from 7 million in 1940 to 42 million in

1945. The most progressive tax years in US history were 1944
and 1945, with a 94% rate applied to any income above $200,000
(the equivalent in 2009 of $2.4 million). Such top rates, often

denounced as confiscatory by those who had to pay them, would
not drop below 80% for another 20 years. At the end of World War
II, many other countries adopted similar and often extreme tax

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