Worth considering:
The willingness of the rich to defend their wealth from taxation to the point of national ruin is nothing new in world history ...So, the next time some fool tells you that the wealthy control the Republican Party and would never let it default on the good faith and full credit of the United States of America, remember oh yes they would, because each of them believes that his wealth can be shielded from the consequences. And in a world of mobile money, he's probably right.
The Han dynasty in China fell in the third century AD after aristocratic families with government connections became increasingly able to shield their ever-larger land holdings from taxation, which helped precipitate the bloody Yellow Turban peasant revolt. Nearly a millennium and a half later, the great Ming dynasty went into protracted decline in part for similar reasons: unable or unwilling to raise taxes on the landed gentry, the government couldn't pay its soldiers and was overrun by Manchu invaders.
The Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus persuaded his reluctant nobles to accept higher taxes, with which he built a professional military that beat back the invading Ottomans. But after his death the resentful barons placed a weak foreign prince on the throne and got their taxes cut 70 to 80 percent. When their undisciplined army lost to Suleiman the Magnificent, Hungary lost its independence.
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