War and Taxes - Urban Institute Press Book | Political Science & Economics | Perfect for Students, Researchers & Policy Makers" （注：根据SEO优化规范，标题包含主要关键词"War and Taxes"和"Urban Institute Press"，增加了书籍类别"Political Science & Economics"以提升搜索相关性，并添加了目标读者群"Students, Researchers & Policy Makers"作为使用场景）

The authors of this thoughtful work begin with the proposition that there is no precedent for the expenditure of blood and treasure for the last six years of warfare in the Middle East while cutting taxes at the same time. Then, by going all the way back to the War of 1812, they candidly demonstrate that Americans have not always been especially willing to pay higher taxes to finance the nation's wars. Only with the two World Wars and the Korean War were most Americans readily prepared to make the financial sacrifices required to pay for these major wars. Implicit, but not as explicit as it might have been, is the conclusion that citizens are more easily persuaded to pay for wars involving national survival than limited wars with more ambiguous aims.One of the authors' central themes is explaining how the income tax assumed a role of primacy among the various other forms of revenue raising. They note how during the Civil War a perception arose that the income tax was the fairest means of financing that war in response to complaints the rich were exempt from sacrifice. Even after the income tax was legitimized by the Sixteenth Amendment just before the United States entered World War I, it remained a tax imposed on upper income citizens until World War II. This book includes a good description of FDR's successful resistance to a national sales tax to pay the skyrocketing costs of that war in favor of a broader use of the income tax. The authors also provide excellent background on how withholding and the standard deduction first appeared at this time.In the interest of a balanced view, there appears to be an error on page 95. The percentages of the income tax as a share of total revenue match exactly the dollar figures in the next sentence. After half an hour of attempting to trace the vaguely cited source in the footnote, I abandoned the effort. On page 109, the fine quotation should be attributed to Speaker, not Senator, Sam Rayburn. Then there's the cover art. This is a book about American wars and American taxes. The WWII vintage tank appears to be a Sherman, but the ship silhouette is unquestionably one on the Royal Navy's King George V class, and the plane looks like an RAF Mosquito.These minor flaws should not deter anyone from reading this book. The information is generally quite sound and the analysis is very informative. The time spent reading it will be rewarding.