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Ask HN: Who says tax breaks create jobs?
While plausible, I would love to see some empirical evidence that tax breaks do, in fact, create jobs. Where is it? And where is the evidence against the Keynesian idea that the added personal income from a tax break will (basically) just be stuffed under the mattress in a bad economy (in bad investment climates, investors prefer to remain liquid).
My bias is toward Keynes, but I would like to actually have data, not just ideologically driven conjecture to base that on or to change it.
- fractallyte 16y agoChannel 4 in the UK recently showed a documentary by Martin Durkin (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story/4od http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-trillion-pound-h...) which highlighted the economic effects of lowering taxes. Hong Kong was his example of a booming entrepreneurial economy stimulated by light-handed governance. Britain was the counter-example: a vast burden of taxes imposed on the working population, and a corresponding stagnation of economy (and society). I hope this is relevant to your question!
- forkandwait 16y agoIt is relevant indeed, but I am hoping for something smaller and more controlled. There are plenty of low tax shitholes (I think much of S. America) and plenty of high tax super economies (Germany, the finance part of Great Britain), so I don't think the country level analysis is going to work. Again, I don't really know what I am talking about....
- fractallyte 16y agoAnd here's a rather cool article which focuses more on low-tax/tax-free local economies: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thaddeus-russell/mafia-renegade-history_b_773546.html#s164710 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thaddeus-russell/mafia-renegad... There's a pattern here! All of a sudden this is a far more interesting topic... ;-)
- gtlenz 16y agoThe best book to read up on the subject is "The Growth Experiment" by Lawrence Lindsey. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Experiment-Policy-Transforming-Economy/dp/0465027512/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1289833879&sr=8-3 http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Experiment-Policy-Transforming-...