&gt; Would the outcome be better or worse if we had, say, a 99% tax bracket at &gt;$N million, and let the public decide the best way to deploy that funding via the ballot box?<p>If we had that <i>and</i> still had charitable deductions, I suspect <i>more</i> public goods would be funded by charity rather than public decision-making then is now the case, since the marginal cost of charity giving would be much <i>lower</i>.