When Dutch historian Rutger Bregman suggested wealthy people should pay more tax at last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, his speech went viral.

But he says his comments did not go down well with those in the room at the event, which was attended by world leaders and heads of business.

"After I'd given my short speech, the response in the room from the audience was quite aggressive, and no-one really came up to me to say, 'Hey, that was a good speech'. So I went home with a bit of a bad feeling, to be honest," Mr Bregman told 7.30.

"The 'T' word is really the forbidden word in places like Davos. You can talk about anything — about education, about feminism, about climate change — as long as you don't talk about higher taxes on the rich."

'No-one talks about the elephant in the room'

Sorry, this video has expired Rutger Bregman's speech at Davos.

Mr Bregman said he got a similar reaction to comments he made privately about tax at Davos.

"It was at the beginning of the conference on Tuesday, when I was participating in a private panel that was not accessible to journalists, that I raised the 'T' issue of maybe the rich need to stop avoiding their taxes and actually start paying a higher rate," he told 7.30.

"And again the response was quite aggressive."

He said it was after the private panel discussion that he decided to talk about tax during his televised speech.

"I had been invited to talk about my book, Utopia For Realists, which is about things like poverty, a basic income, a shorter working week.

"But I said to myself, I just can't go on and talk about these issues when no-one talks about the elephant in the room, which is, we've got to be talking about taxes, taxes, taxes."

He said he was "totally surprised" by the reaction to his speech online.

"It was only a few days later that it completely exploded," he said.

'Totally corrupt business models'

In his Davos speech, Mr Bregman said industry had to stop talking about philanthropy and start focusing on taxes.

"In places like Davos, philanthropy is being used as a way to distract people from simply immoral things that are going on at the same time," he told 7.30.

"What we have there are billionaires with totally corrupt business models. They're not paying their workers a living wage, they're avoiding their taxes, they're polluting the environment.

"And then to distract from all that, they say, 'Oh, I've got a nice plan for some education for girls in Uganda', or whatever.

"I'm not against philanthropy, I mean, by all means come up with all those wonderful plans. But pay your taxes first.

"With taxes we buy civilisation and it's simply a prerequisite for a well-governed society."

'Lower taxes for the lower classes'

Asked about the counterview, which is that higher taxes curtail the free market and therefore limit economic growth, Mr Bregman said to "look at history".

"If you look at the golden age of capitalism, between the '50s and the beginning of the '70s, what you see around the developed world is we have much higher taxes," he said.

"A higher top marginal tax rate for the very rich, for the millionaires and the billionaires. We had higher taxes on inheritances, and we had higher taxes on wealth as well.

"What I was advocating in Davos was simply lower taxes for the lower classes and the middle classes, the people who actually do the real, valuable work, and higher taxes on the rich.

"This is what we had in the past and in those times we had much higher rates of economic growth and much more technological innovation."