4 ms·

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot Recall for me a competing principle with its very own meta-relevant ren

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot Recall for me a competing principle with its very own meta-relevant renaissance painting. You are not going to untangle this knot with "just raise the top marginal rate"; it does not eliminate any underlying assumptions which preempt a solution. You do not have indy's gun, and this is not a bumbling swordsman.

dctoedt 7y ago
> You do not have indy's gun You're awfully confident. > this is not a bumbling swordsman. "Bumbling"? The swordsman in the Raiders clip seemed to be quite skilled; unfortunately for him and his mission, his skills — and more importantly, his assessment of his situation — were badly mismatched to the reality. Putting it another way: As my late father used to say, you can be the world's most-skilled rain dancer, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to make it rain. Supply-siders urge tax cuts and more tax cuts because that will supposedly "make it rain" due to innovators doing more innovating and entrepreneurs doing more enterprising; they also scold anyone who suggests raising the top marginal tax rate. There's more than a little reason to wonder whether the supply-siders are like rain dancers. If I understand supply-side economics correctly, the underlying model of human motivation assumes that innovators and entrepreneurs will change their behavior in response to almost any increase or decrease in marginal tax rates. While that's likely somewhat true when the marginal rates are at confiscatory levels, there's ample reason to doubt that it's true in the general case, because: 1. Optimizing after-tax revenue is not the only thing that motivates innovators and entrepreneurs. Many other things play roles as well, in varying degrees for different people: A quest for status; a sense of solidarity with "the tribe"; personal satisfaction from the work; and altruism, to name just a few factors. 2. We're nowhere near confiscatory marginal tax rates and haven't been for many years. The Reagan tax cuts were followed by his tax increases [0]. The tax hikes of the early 1990s, under Bush the Elder and Clinton, were followed by a major economic boom (yes, I know, correlation ≠ causation). Most economists who have studied the matter have estimated that the optimum maximum tax rate for generating tax revenue is around 70%. [1] Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman (in whom I have considerable confidence because of his epistemological modesty and his track record) endorses this view [2]. The Cato Institute recently published an opposing view [3], but I don't find it persuasive, for socio-political reasons that I don't have time to go into. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_t... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Empirical_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Empirical_data [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio... [3] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-economists-dont-agree-70-percent-top-marginal-tax-rate-good-idea https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-economists-d...
- microcolonel 7y ago
  I'm saying that it's a perfect waste of time to look at the problem of undue consolidation and monopolization from the perspective of personal income taxes. The same consolidation and monopolization trends have been happening in all of these income tax regimes.
  - dctoedt 7y ago
    > I'm saying that it's a perfect waste of time to look at the problem of undue consolidation and monopolization from the perspective of personal income taxes. You might well be right about that; it's an empirical question.

dctoedt 7y ago

> You do not have indy's gun You're awfully confident. > this is not a bumbling swordsman. "Bumbling"? The swordsman in the Raiders clip seemed to be quite skilled; unfortunately for him and his mission, his skills — and more importantly, his assessment of his situation — were badly mismatched to the reality. Putting it another way: As my late father used to say, you can be the world's most-skilled rain dancer, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to make it rain. Supply-siders urge tax cuts and more tax cuts because that will supposedly "make it rain" due to innovators doing more innovating and entrepreneurs doing more enterprising; they also scold anyone who suggests raising the top marginal tax rate. There's more than a little reason to wonder whether the supply-siders are like rain dancers. If I understand supply-side economics correctly, the underlying model of human motivation assumes that innovators and entrepreneurs will change their behavior in response to almost any increase or decrease in marginal tax rates. While that's likely somewhat true when the marginal rates are at confiscatory levels, there's ample reason to doubt that it's true in the general case, because: 1. Optimizing after-tax revenue is not the only thing that motivates innovators and entrepreneurs. Many other things play roles as well, in varying degrees for different people: A quest for status; a sense of solidarity with "the tribe"; personal satisfaction from the work; and altruism, to name just a few factors. 2. We're nowhere near confiscatory marginal tax rates and haven't been for many years. The Reagan tax cuts were followed by his tax increases [0]. The tax hikes of the early 1990s, under Bush the Elder and Clinton, were followed by a major economic boom (yes, I know, correlation ≠ causation). Most economists who have studied the matter have estimated that the optimum maximum tax rate for generating tax revenue is around 70%. [1] Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman (in whom I have considerable confidence because of his epistemological modesty and his track record) endorses this view [2]. The Cato Institute recently published an opposing view [3], but I don't find it persuasive, for socio-political reasons that I don't have time to go into. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_t... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Empirical_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Empirical_data [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio... [3] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-economists-dont-agree-70-percent-top-marginal-tax-rate-good-idea https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-economists-d...

microcolonel 7y ago
I'm saying that it's a perfect waste of time to look at the problem of undue consolidation and monopolization from the perspective of personal income taxes. The same consolidation and monopolization trends have been happening in all of these income tax regimes.
- dctoedt 7y ago
  > I'm saying that it's a perfect waste of time to look at the problem of undue consolidation and monopolization from the perspective of personal income taxes. You might well be right about that; it's an empirical question.