Ok, a couple points here: First, he's talking about the total effect of the taxes, not the marginal effect of the new taxes. Aside from being against the econo

Ok, a couple points here: First, he's talking about the total effect of the taxes, not the marginal effect of the new taxes. Aside from being against the economist's gospel, it's also disingenuous. His tax rate isn't Zero now, it's 36%. He gives some lip service to this later, throwing out the $2000 number without really justifying it, and he doesn't mention the degree to which those taxes have gone up, just what their new value is. Second, he gets REALLY sloppy when talking about the corporate taxes. It's along the same lines as the first problem - he's talking overall rates, not rates of change, but it's really egregious there - the 8% returns he's talking about at this point are total fantasy. Third, and this isn't necessarily a problem with the article, just its overall premise - As a society, we may get more use out of taxing Mr. Mankiw more than we would out of his limited-reach speaking engagement. Assuming he makes $500k, a number I'm not even going to try to justify, except to say the other poor bastard of a professor who jumped into this arena was making along those lines, increasing Mr.Mankiw's taxes by 3.6% yields an additional $18k in federal income, which can be diverted to more broadly useful expenditures than hearing an economist talk. The question to me isn't "Will Mr. Mankiw work less?" - let's assume there is something of a depressing effect on his outcome - the question is, "Is this a tradeoff we should make?" Finally, I'd point out that Mr. Mankiw's kids will also be able to make use of the services and institutions paid for by his tax money - this isn't a zero-sum game. He and his kids live in the country where his tax money gets spent. If he doesn't like what it gets spent on, well, join the club, buddy, but that's a different argument.