9 The economic history of taxation and inequality in the United States
I. Introduction: a causal claim
In recent decades, the study of inequality in the United States has been defined by strong claims about historical patterns in the distribution of income and wealth. The most prominent example presents a U-curve narrative (UCN) spanning the 20th century, in which persistent high inequality in the late Gilded Age gives way to a mid-century leveling, followed by a sharp rebound after 1980. This inequality U is fundamentally empirical in nature, with its shape emerging from attempts to measure the top distributional shares of income and wealth holdings over the last century. Its uses are simultaneously theoretical and prescriptive. ...
