By Deborah Boucoyannis, assistant professor of politics the University of Virginia and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.... “Taxing the rich” has emerged as a controversial proposal on how to deal with the historic rise in inequality of the last few decades. ... The historical record, however, suggests that taxing the wealthiest does have an important, but different, consequence: making the wealthy vested in the common good. In fact, taxing the wealthy was crucial for the emergence of representative government itself. Based on an original database of about 600 members of t...