> I see people make the argument that it will reduce 'incentives to do well' all the time... but why is that so accepted? Maybe insights from microeconomics 10

> I see people make the argument that it will reduce 'incentives to do well' all the time... but why is that so accepted? Maybe insights from microeconomics 101 about what happens with supply curve when you drive a tax wedge into it, along with hundreds of papers published estimating the elasticity of labor supply have something to do with it. Yes, labor is elastic. See for example this review from Congressional Budget Office, i.e. people who actually care a lot about what taxes are: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/workingpaper/10-25-2012-recentresearchonlaborsupplyelasticities.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-... > The net gain for 'winning' is always going to be positive, so it will always be better to win than to not... Yes, but is it better than taking some time off to do some yacht sailing? If government takes most of your winnings, why not reduce your hours slightly and use it for more leisure instead? > Really, after enough millions, the extra money isn't really changing their life... yet many still are driven to keep 'winning'... it clearly isn't about having the money to buy things at that point, it is about an internal drive. That won't change if we tax at a higher rate. For some, it won't, but for others, it will. Lots of people in fact do give up after enough millions. You cannot only focus on things that are seen, like Elon Musk's drive, but you also have to think about things that are unseen, like that apartment building developer worth a few millions whose name nobody knows outside his local industry, who'll simply decide to retire early instead of putting effort into organizing construction of another apartment complex. > As for it hurting the economy, what evidence do you have of that? If you increase taxes, then, since labor supply is not perfectly inelastic, people will work less, so less work will be done. This is some basic economics. The discussion on this question in the field is not about whether taxes hurt the economy, but rather how much they do. Some people think that they don't hurt much, others think that they hurt a lot, but that they do is really a consensus view, and in fact common sense. > If we use the extra tax dollars to provide UBI, this will cause economic growth as there are more consumers with money to spend. No, this is just the broken window fallacy. At best, there's exactly the same amount of money to spend, you're simply moving the money around between people. If you tax some people to provide UBI for others, the same money is spent either way, it's just different people who spend it. In reality, since taxes have distortionary effects, there will be less money to spend overall: since redistribution is typically from more to less wealthy, and since less wealthy typically spend more on consumption than on investment than more wealthy people, reduced investment will in fact reduce the growth.