Taxing American wars creates accountability, prevents lengthy conflict
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-taxing-american-wars-accountability-lengthy.html
Her new book, "Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy," makes the case that war taxes held leaders accountable, because the public was regularly reminded of war's cost.
"For most of its history, the United States had paid for its wars through war taxes, and then around the Korean and especially the Vietnam wars, the United States started avoiding these taxes and paying for war through debt," Kreps said. "The effect was to create a distance between the public and the war, and erode these accountability linkages and remove these constraints on the ways the United States fights these wars."