&gt;Rising minimum wage and reducing hours does the exact opposite. Decreasing a tax burden is a good idea - but decreasing the tax burden on everyone.<p>This is the exact same story we&#x27;ve been told for 30 years: if you want more jobs and more productivity just lower taxes. It didn&#x27;t work then and it doesn&#x27;t work now. It just enables the ultra-wealthy to siphon off wealth from the rest of society.<p>Ultimately that <i>hurts</i> productivity.<p>&gt;The UK dabbled in extremely high investment taxes at 98%. I think this would fall under your &#x27;tax the rich&#x27; proscription. The unfortunate side effect was that investment was virtually stopped overnight and the country stopped growing GDP for two whole years,<p>IIRC this was actually due to the oil crisis. The US, on the other hand, dabbled in ~90% tax rates in the 50s when it experienced high growth levels never before seen since.