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You're talking about your marginal rate and we simply are far to the left on the laffer curve, raising taxes will raise revenue. I'm not unsympathetic, my margi
by whimsicalism 1y ago
You're talking about your marginal rate and we simply are far to the left on the laffer curve, raising taxes will raise revenue. I'm not unsympathetic, my marginal is close to the same - but generally I think people's claims that they will stop working are generally more bark than bite and the evidence largely backs that up.
If you don't want a tax-based solution, I do hope you are agitating for SS and medicare cuts.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago> we simply are far to the left on the laffer curve, raising taxes will raise revenue I don't believe this, actually. I think that we will raise more revenue, yes, by squeezing more from the Fortune 500; but you will absolutely crush small business and consultancy work further. It's kind of like how an 80% tax rate on everyone making over $100K would do a fantastic job of raising revenue, but it's fundamentally stupid and would kill all future golden geese. (On that note, I see this comment a lot about how we had huge tax rates, 91% in the 1950s; but this is misleading. The effective tax rate for those earners was only 41%, due to the sheer number of exemptions, according to modern analysis. We have never had an actual effective 91% tax rate, or anywhere close to it. Those rates were theater, never reality.)
- whimsicalism 1y agopretty much all modern economists disagree with you https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/laffer-curve/ https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/laffer-curve/
- gjsman-1000 1y ago... in 2012?
- whimsicalism 1y agoare effective tax rates higher or lower than in 2012?
- gjsman-1000 1y agoWell, if we include property tax, sales tax, SALT deduction cap changes, compliance costs, regulatory burdens, state and local taxes... higher. On that note, you have no evidence that economists focus solely on tax rates on the curve independently of the economy at large. By definition, the curve is determined from external factors and economic measurements, none of which currently resemble 2012. If the economy crashed and there was 20% unemployment, do you still think they'd stand behind the same curve?
- whimsicalism 1y agookay, believe what you want. i just hope you are pushing for SS+medicare cuts
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alphazard 1y agoJust a reminder that professional macro-economists are paid to justify political decisions. That's the job. Find data that can arguably make this policy (made for other reasons) make sense to the voters, who have a much worse understanding of economics. As always, the question with economists is "why aren't you rich?". You would get much better answers about macro-economic counterfactuals by going to a macro-trading firm like Bridgewater and asking the employees "what do you think would happen if..."
- whimsicalism 1y agoputting aside the fact that that is not really true about bias in the economics profession, I have good friends who are ex-Bridgewater who would agree with me... and listen to what Ray Dalio says about our fiscal trajectory.
- justlikereddit 1y ago>I think people's claims that they will stop working are generally more bark than bite They stop paying taxes and work off the books instead but you don't announce that publicly for obvious reasons. The incentive to do this increases with tax pressure. The willingness of people to pay for tax-free work equally increases because you'll pay less. There's also an increasing asymmetry of what the government gains from a tax hike versus how oppressive it becomes that becomes unfavorable as tax rates go up.
- whimsicalism 1y agookay, i hope you are pushing for social security and medicare cuts then. hard choices are hard for a reason.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThe type of people who will work off book to avoid 50% taxes will generally also work off book to avoid 25% taxes, so increasing the tax rate does not have a large effect on the hidden economy ratio.