But its handling of the crisis has been tough: interest rates were jerked up to punitive levels, and stability of a sort has returned within days.
The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems.
And even when governments raise the money, they should first get rid of deductions and reverse unmeritocratic measures (such as George Bush's repeal of America's death tax) rather than jacking up income-tax rates to punitive levels.
Threadneedle Street could kill off the property boom by raising borrowing costs to punitive levels, but it has to be aware that there will be collateral damage to the rest of the economy.
In 2007, the government introduced new regulations for fee-sharing systems for tourism occurring on community lands, effectively taxing these agreements at a punitive level in excess of 50%, thus greatly reducing revenues that communities receive from such arrangements (Snyder et al. 2011).
Most of West Cheshire's six recommendations on how to reduce the rising numbers of people dependent on its charity food handouts focus on welfare policy: more efficient jobcentre administration, a less punitive sanctions system, adequate levels of benefit payment, and a properly functioning local welfare safety net.
For too long, the president's immigration platform has been at odds with itself – on the one hand, making the case for inclusion by urging Congress to grant immigrants full political rights; on the other, carrying out exclusionary, punitive policies and record levels of deportations.
And it certainly would not end mass incarceration, which is the product of countless punitive policies across all levels of government.
