>>That correlation is disputed, to say the least. Even if it weren't, economic growth rates, while important, are not the be-all and end-all of society being "b

>>That correlation is disputed, to say the least. Even if it weren't, economic growth rates, while important, are not the be-all and end-all of society being "better", especially when a large amount of the wealth is concentrated in a few hands. The correlation is plainly evident in the datasets. It's a very strong correlation that has been widely observed and studied. >>It seems probable that pg simply did not take interest into account. It's possible he did. Regardless, PG clearly laid out why such taxes are absolutely disastrous for both the incentives to start companies and the expansion rate of existing companies. You can fiddle around with the numbers, and the basic conclusion wouldn't change. >> Even if it weren't, economic growth rates, while important, are not the be-all and end-all of society being "better", especially when a large amount of the wealth is concentrated in a few hands. Economic growth rates strongly correlate with improvements in overall socieconomic metrics. See my comment in the other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207752 >>But the United States isn't necessarily at or even near that stage, considering that several large European countries have strong economies despite much higher government spending as a percentage of GDP. The US and large European countries have all seen their economic and wage growth rates stagnate since 1970. This is disastrous for the objective of improving quality of life. Nothing has a larger long-term impact on quality of life than per capita GDP. Productivity growth is the basis of nearly every improvement in people's living conditions. Of course, Western countries still have strong economies. Other countries cannot catch up to three centuries of superior industrial development in a single generation. But the rate of improvement has stagnated, and other less social democratic countries have closed their gap with the West, so there is absolutely no reason to assume the last 50 years' experiment in social democracy has been a success.