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Cracking down on CEOs who perform disastrously and then cut staff while paying themselves giant bonuses is no more about funding the treasury than slamming mega

Cracking down on CEOs who perform disastrously and then cut staff while paying themselves giant bonuses is no more about funding the treasury than slamming mega-billionaires with some punitive tax: taxes (at the federal level in a nation-state that denominates its sovereign debt in its current) aren’t first-order about generating revenue, they’re first-order about creating incentives. The IRS is trying to incinerate dollars at something like the rate the Fed generates them, which is not a bad system (you’ll notice how many people invented the “gold sink” in game economies). Keeping deficit spending inside some tolerance is about sovereign debt auctions, not like, running out of green ink. The argument for not doing this kind of shit is that no one will work hard or innovate if there isn’t permanent dynastic wealth and legal immunity as an incentive: wrong. People will work insanely hard for mere absurd luxury and favorable treatments by the courts. You punitively tax this stuff to make “wannabe serial killer” seem like a comparatively attractive job opportunity vis-a-vis CEO of Herman Miller.

gruez 3y ago
>taxes (at the federal level in a nation-state that denominates its sovereign debt in its current) aren’t first-order about generating revenue, they’re first-order about creating incentives. Income taxes makes up 50% of federal tax receipts, and disincentivize productive individuals from working by taxing their income more. According to your theory, income taxes aren't there to collect revenue, they're to... incentivize people to work less? [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sourc...
- benreesman 3y ago
  I wasn’t talking about rationales for or against taxing the people who aren’t yet rich enough to cheat constantly on their taxes: everyone agrees that Joe Doing Okay is getting hit with a higher tax rate than John Capital Gains Optimization. I’m saying that there’s a legitimate debate about whether Bond-villain, capture-oriented, smash-and-grab, “how many TVs can you carry” career tracks should pay off for anyone. HN is in general the smartest crowd on the net, but there are a few blind spots, and being able to throw one rock in any direction and hit 9 “temporarily impoverished billionaires” is one of them.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  disincentivize productive individuals from working by taxing their income more. And yet the most productive societies have the highest tax rates... Clearly, this theory that taxes disincentive productivity does not comport with decades of empirical evidence. Literally nobody who values money says, "I could make 1 billion dollars but since I'll only get $450 million after taxes I'm just going to sit on this beach and do nothing instead."
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    What’s the measure you’re using to rank “most productive societies”? The first one that comes to mind for me is “GDP per capita” and when I sort that list in descending order my first thought isn’t “those are some high tax rate jurisdictions at the top!” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_rec...
  - gruez 3y ago
    >Clearly, this theory that taxes disincentive productivity does not comport with decades of empirical evidence. Literally nobody who values money says, "I could make 1 billion dollars but since I'll only get $450 million after taxes I'm just going to sit on this beach and do nothing instead." 1. Income tax applies to everyone, not just billionaire startup founders. Doctors might be well paid, but I'm very skeptical that they'll be equally willing to work more hours if their marginal returns from working was halved by taxes. 2. going back to the claim that "taxes [...] aren’t first-order about generating revenue, they’re first-order about creating incentives", what are income taxes supposed to incentivize then?
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      As a tax lawyer, my clients are the people who would be most affected by high taxes. Literally none of my hundreds of clients has ever turned down making more money just because a little more of it will be taxed. And shockingly, despite the "high" tax rates of CA and NY, almost of my clients prefer to live in these high-tax jurisdictions over low tax jurisdictions like FL where they would keep more of their money. Some of them even choose to live in the EU, where even more of their money goes to taxes.

gruez 3y ago

>taxes (at the federal level in a nation-state that denominates its sovereign debt in its current) aren’t first-order about generating revenue, they’re first-order about creating incentives. Income taxes makes up 50% of federal tax receipts, and disincentivize productive individuals from working by taxing their income more. According to your theory, income taxes aren't there to collect revenue, they're to... incentivize people to work less? [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sourc...

benreesman 3y ago
I wasn’t talking about rationales for or against taxing the people who aren’t yet rich enough to cheat constantly on their taxes: everyone agrees that Joe Doing Okay is getting hit with a higher tax rate than John Capital Gains Optimization. I’m saying that there’s a legitimate debate about whether Bond-villain, capture-oriented, smash-and-grab, “how many TVs can you carry” career tracks should pay off for anyone. HN is in general the smartest crowd on the net, but there are a few blind spots, and being able to throw one rock in any direction and hit 9 “temporarily impoverished billionaires” is one of them.
gamblor956 3y ago
disincentivize productive individuals from working by taxing their income more. And yet the most productive societies have the highest tax rates... Clearly, this theory that taxes disincentive productivity does not comport with decades of empirical evidence. Literally nobody who values money says, "I could make 1 billion dollars but since I'll only get $450 million after taxes I'm just going to sit on this beach and do nothing instead."
- sokoloff 3y ago
  What’s the measure you’re using to rank “most productive societies”? The first one that comes to mind for me is “GDP per capita” and when I sort that list in descending order my first thought isn’t “those are some high tax rate jurisdictions at the top!” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_rec...
- gruez 3y ago
  >Clearly, this theory that taxes disincentive productivity does not comport with decades of empirical evidence. Literally nobody who values money says, "I could make 1 billion dollars but since I'll only get $450 million after taxes I'm just going to sit on this beach and do nothing instead." 1. Income tax applies to everyone, not just billionaire startup founders. Doctors might be well paid, but I'm very skeptical that they'll be equally willing to work more hours if their marginal returns from working was halved by taxes. 2. going back to the claim that "taxes [...] aren’t first-order about generating revenue, they’re first-order about creating incentives", what are income taxes supposed to incentivize then?
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    As a tax lawyer, my clients are the people who would be most affected by high taxes. Literally none of my hundreds of clients has ever turned down making more money just because a little more of it will be taxed. And shockingly, despite the "high" tax rates of CA and NY, almost of my clients prefer to live in these high-tax jurisdictions over low tax jurisdictions like FL where they would keep more of their money. Some of them even choose to live in the EU, where even more of their money goes to taxes.