7 ms·

Note how the example is lower taxes: why don't we give lower taxes to a hundred thousand people and see what they do? But now suppose the proposal is higher tax

by hugh3 16y ago

Note how the example is lower taxes: why don't we give lower taxes to a hundred thousand people and see what they do? But now suppose the proposal is higher taxes for a hundred thousand people. How do you think the hundred thousand people in the test group are going to react? Not too well, and probably not nearly the same way as if you raised taxes on everybody. Isn't this one of the supposed advantages of having states, though? So that different laws can be tried out in different places under the same general societal conditions and we can learn what works and what doesn't work? And yet doesn't the Federal Government keep trying to subsume more state powers into itself?

nickpinkston 16y ago
I'm guessing behavioral economists would be lapping this one up if they were given the cash to do so, but then we'd actually have some empirical proof about policy - politicians prefer to just rant for votes - far cheaper and easier to manipulate... Yea, power always concentrates up - seemingly because coordination costs get cheaper as the pool of people decreases in size.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, for the record, we have tried the whole supply-side economics thing in the real world twice now, with less-than-stellar results.. I mean, there's no control group but you'd need an alternate universe for that. EDIT: sigh. Downvote away for not liking what I said, but you can't even disagree with it, it's factual. That particular idea has been tried twice in the real world.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    It's been tried much more than twice. And it's been done with success. For example, Kennedy in 1964 was very successful. See http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2003/08/The-Historical-Lessons-of-Lower-Tax-Rates http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2003/08/The-Histori... And also http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.h... : High marginal tax rates discourage work effort, saving, and investment, and promote tax avoidance and tax evasion. A reduction in high marginal tax rates would boost long term economic growth, and reduce the attractiveness of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. The economic benefits of ERTA were summarized by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers in 1994: "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth." Unfortunately, the Council could not bring itself to acknowledge the counterproductive effects high marginal tax rates can have upon taxpayer behavior and tax avoidance activities. Since 1984 the JEC has provided factual information about the impact of the tax cuts of the 1980s. For example, for many years the JEC has published IRS data on federal tax payments of the top 1 percent, top 5 percent, top 10 percent, and other taxpayers. These data show that after the high marginal tax rates of 1981 were cut, tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply. For example, in 1981 the top 1 percent paid 17.6 percent of all personal income taxes, but by 1988 their share had jumped to 27.5 percent, a 10 percentage point increase. The graph below illustrates changes in the tax burden during this period. Indeed, I'd like to see your evidence that it's bad. That evidence should be clear, in that it shows that the problem is not actually government over-spending or other issues.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      quote: tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply This is the reason for that phrase lies, damned lies and statistics. The top 1 percent have been getting an ever-increasing share of gross national income, so their share of gross national taxed income, hence gross tax take, correspondingly went up. Meanwhile, we're staring at a total meltdown on the demand side of the equation -- people who aren't in that top tier have seen their real wages fall consistently since the 1980s. What happens to a consumer economy when you've starved all the consumers? I'm not saying that the tax code created that upward aggregation - technology, globalization and outsourcing labor are probably the biggest factors in that order. But it seems like a solution addressing the exact opposite of the problem.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        ...people who aren't in that top tier have seen their real wages fall consistently since the 1980s. This claim doesn't pass the smell test. Can you name a single good or service (note: not a category of goods/services) which is less available today than it was in the 80's? If not, then real wages (i.e., wages measured in terms of the amount of stuff they can buy) have not gone down.
        jbooth 16y ago
        I know you know the definition of real wages, and it's nothing to do with what you said -- it's wages indexed by BLS inflation numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr... I overspoke. They've stagnated for the bottom 4 quintiles since the early 80s, and declined since 2000. For future trends, I'd extrapolate from the current U-3 and more importantly U-6 figures (they don't look good).
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        In general, the definition of economic concepts does not include references to specific government agencies. Are "real wages" not a meaningful concept in Mexico, beyond the reach of the BLS? If you look at the definition of inflation (keep track of units!), you can immediately see that wages indexed by inflation == amount of stuff you can buy. As for BLS inflation numbers, I agree that by that specific measurement, real wages appear to have stagnated. On the other hand, people today have more stuff than they did in the 80's. That suggests the BLS inflation numbers might not mean what you think they mean. (It's actually pretty clear why they don't quite match up if you look closely at the methodology of the BLS. The basket of goods used to compute inflation today is larger than the basket of goods in 1980. A proper measure of inflation would take a fixed basket of goods at t[0] and measure the cost of the same basket of goods at t[1]. But that would require different inflation measures based on the starting year. This would be too complicated to give to politicians, so the BLS doesn't bother. )
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    You seem to completely misunderstand the purpose of the control group.
  - grav1tas 16y ago
    Just because it's factual doesn't make it true. If you're going for the record, could you supply some good citations? The skeptic in me writes all statements like the one you just wrote as categorically false without some form of external verification.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      You want a cite for the Reagan and GW Bush presidencies' defining policy initiatives?
      - grav1tas 16y ago
        I'd like some good reading on arguments against supply-side economics and its applications during those two presidencies. Even better if its from somebody who knows a little bit of what's what (you) on the topic. :)
    - Natsu 16y ago
      > "Just because it's factual doesn't make it true." May I ask what definition of "factual" you use? Because every definition I can find says that it has to be something grounded in reality and I looked it up just to be sure.
      - grav1tas 16y ago
        Sure you may. I operate on facts being something that can be shown to be true or false i.e. something that is not an opinion. Here's one I found on Google define that's close to what I've always used: "Fact: a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts" Thus, a thing that can be proven one way or the other given verifying information. Something that is factual is something that is of facts. Something can be false and still grounded in reality, because reality shows it to be false, hence your definition holds as well...because they're effectively the same thing.
        Natsu 16y ago
        That sounds more like what I would use for a definition of the word "falsifiable." I understand the word "factual" to require that the thing so named be true, which is what I understand the definition to mean when it talks about things "grounded in reality."
bhousel 16y ago
You're asking how people would feel if they were forced into high-tax and low-tax test groups.. But suppose people are given a choice opt-in to a tax lottery system, such that instead of paying a fixed rate the taxpayer would have a random chance of paying either a higher or lower rate. As initially reprehensible as this sounds to me, the government could make quite a bit of money by taking clues from the gaming industry. Gamification of the tax system?
- DavidSJ 16y ago
  Perhaps it should be required that the net income from this lottery be 0.
  - bhousel 16y ago
    That would be nice, but then you're not doing an experiment.
    - adrianN 16y ago
      Why not? You can still observe how people behave differently if they have higher or lower taxes.
      - bhousel 16y ago
        I guess that's true. But what I meant to say was that in order to arrange for the results to net a zero difference from what the government would collect normally, you're not really randomly assigning tax rates or running a lottery, you're just fixing people's rates at something other than what they would normally be. Something about manipulating the conditions of the experiment (even a stupid thought experiment) to force a desired outcome doesn't sit right with me.
    - ars 16y ago
      He means the higher and lower taxes would cancel themself out. Not that the people in it earn nothing.
- 16y ago
ddlatham 16y ago
Then raise taxes on everybody except a hundred thousand (randomly selected) people.
lutorm 16y ago
You could structure it such that when the experiment is over and the law is either accepted or rejected, those who tried the eliminated alternative were economically compensated. It would be harder to do in cases like criminal law, though.

by hugh3 16y ago

nickpinkston 16y ago

I'm guessing behavioral economists would be lapping this one up if they were given the cash to do so, but then we'd actually have some empirical proof about policy - politicians prefer to just rant for votes - far cheaper and easier to manipulate... Yea, power always concentrates up - seemingly because coordination costs get cheaper as the pool of people decreases in size.

jbooth 16y ago
Well, for the record, we have tried the whole supply-side economics thing in the real world twice now, with less-than-stellar results.. I mean, there's no control group but you'd need an alternate universe for that. EDIT: sigh. Downvote away for not liking what I said, but you can't even disagree with it, it's factual. That particular idea has been tried twice in the real world.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  It's been tried much more than twice. And it's been done with success. For example, Kennedy in 1964 was very successful. See http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2003/08/The-Historical-Lessons-of-Lower-Tax-Rates http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2003/08/The-Histori... And also http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.h... : High marginal tax rates discourage work effort, saving, and investment, and promote tax avoidance and tax evasion. A reduction in high marginal tax rates would boost long term economic growth, and reduce the attractiveness of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. The economic benefits of ERTA were summarized by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers in 1994: "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth." Unfortunately, the Council could not bring itself to acknowledge the counterproductive effects high marginal tax rates can have upon taxpayer behavior and tax avoidance activities. Since 1984 the JEC has provided factual information about the impact of the tax cuts of the 1980s. For example, for many years the JEC has published IRS data on federal tax payments of the top 1 percent, top 5 percent, top 10 percent, and other taxpayers. These data show that after the high marginal tax rates of 1981 were cut, tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply. For example, in 1981 the top 1 percent paid 17.6 percent of all personal income taxes, but by 1988 their share had jumped to 27.5 percent, a 10 percentage point increase. The graph below illustrates changes in the tax burden during this period. Indeed, I'd like to see your evidence that it's bad. That evidence should be clear, in that it shows that the problem is not actually government over-spending or other issues.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    quote: tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply This is the reason for that phrase lies, damned lies and statistics. The top 1 percent have been getting an ever-increasing share of gross national income, so their share of gross national taxed income, hence gross tax take, correspondingly went up. Meanwhile, we're staring at a total meltdown on the demand side of the equation -- people who aren't in that top tier have seen their real wages fall consistently since the 1980s. What happens to a consumer economy when you've starved all the consumers? I'm not saying that the tax code created that upward aggregation - technology, globalization and outsourcing labor are probably the biggest factors in that order. But it seems like a solution addressing the exact opposite of the problem.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      ...people who aren't in that top tier have seen their real wages fall consistently since the 1980s. This claim doesn't pass the smell test. Can you name a single good or service (note: not a category of goods/services) which is less available today than it was in the 80's? If not, then real wages (i.e., wages measured in terms of the amount of stuff they can buy) have not gone down.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        I know you know the definition of real wages, and it's nothing to do with what you said -- it's wages indexed by BLS inflation numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1967-2003.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distr... I overspoke. They've stagnated for the bottom 4 quintiles since the early 80s, and declined since 2000. For future trends, I'd extrapolate from the current U-3 and more importantly U-6 figures (they don't look good).
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        In general, the definition of economic concepts does not include references to specific government agencies. Are "real wages" not a meaningful concept in Mexico, beyond the reach of the BLS? If you look at the definition of inflation (keep track of units!), you can immediately see that wages indexed by inflation == amount of stuff you can buy. As for BLS inflation numbers, I agree that by that specific measurement, real wages appear to have stagnated. On the other hand, people today have more stuff than they did in the 80's. That suggests the BLS inflation numbers might not mean what you think they mean. (It's actually pretty clear why they don't quite match up if you look closely at the methodology of the BLS. The basket of goods used to compute inflation today is larger than the basket of goods in 1980. A proper measure of inflation would take a fixed basket of goods at t[0] and measure the cost of the same basket of goods at t[1]. But that would require different inflation measures based on the starting year. This would be too complicated to give to politicians, so the BLS doesn't bother. )
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  You seem to completely misunderstand the purpose of the control group.
- grav1tas 16y ago
  Just because it's factual doesn't make it true. If you're going for the record, could you supply some good citations? The skeptic in me writes all statements like the one you just wrote as categorically false without some form of external verification.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    You want a cite for the Reagan and GW Bush presidencies' defining policy initiatives?
    - grav1tas 16y ago
      I'd like some good reading on arguments against supply-side economics and its applications during those two presidencies. Even better if its from somebody who knows a little bit of what's what (you) on the topic. :)
  - Natsu 16y ago
    > "Just because it's factual doesn't make it true." May I ask what definition of "factual" you use? Because every definition I can find says that it has to be something grounded in reality and I looked it up just to be sure.
    - grav1tas 16y ago
      Sure you may. I operate on facts being something that can be shown to be true or false i.e. something that is not an opinion. Here's one I found on Google define that's close to what I've always used: "Fact: a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts" Thus, a thing that can be proven one way or the other given verifying information. Something that is factual is something that is of facts. Something can be false and still grounded in reality, because reality shows it to be false, hence your definition holds as well...because they're effectively the same thing.
      - Natsu 16y ago
        That sounds more like what I would use for a definition of the word "falsifiable." I understand the word "factual" to require that the thing so named be true, which is what I understand the definition to mean when it talks about things "grounded in reality."

bhousel 16y ago

You're asking how people would feel if they were forced into high-tax and low-tax test groups.. But suppose people are given a choice opt-in to a tax lottery system, such that instead of paying a fixed rate the taxpayer would have a random chance of paying either a higher or lower rate. As initially reprehensible as this sounds to me, the government could make quite a bit of money by taking clues from the gaming industry. Gamification of the tax system?

DavidSJ 16y ago
Perhaps it should be required that the net income from this lottery be 0.
- bhousel 16y ago
  That would be nice, but then you're not doing an experiment.
  - adrianN 16y ago
    Why not? You can still observe how people behave differently if they have higher or lower taxes.
    - bhousel 16y ago
      I guess that's true. But what I meant to say was that in order to arrange for the results to net a zero difference from what the government would collect normally, you're not really randomly assigning tax rates or running a lottery, you're just fixing people's rates at something other than what they would normally be. Something about manipulating the conditions of the experiment (even a stupid thought experiment) to force a desired outcome doesn't sit right with me.
  - ars 16y ago
    He means the higher and lower taxes would cancel themself out. Not that the people in it earn nothing.
16y ago

ddlatham 16y ago

Then raise taxes on everybody except a hundred thousand (randomly selected) people.

lutorm 16y ago

You could structure it such that when the experiment is over and the law is either accepted or rejected, those who tried the eliminated alternative were economically compensated. It would be harder to do in cases like criminal law, though.