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Or, will you still work as hard, but not necessarily at making money... At super high tax rates I'd be doing less lucrative, but more fun work. If I ended up

by mrkurt 18y ago

Or, will you still work as hard, but not necessarily at making money... At super high tax rates I'd be doing less lucrative, but more fun work. If I ended up doing charity work or something, society might be better off (though I'd have less money to spend doing it). If I worked at a bar, society probably wouldn't be better off.

CWuestefeld 18y ago
Economists like Friedrich Hayek have shown that the amount of money you can make from any endeavor is a direct indication of the value that society as a whole derives from that endeavor. Thus, if your work doesn't get you rich, it's because society doesn't value your contribution as much as the "rich-making" one. (that's not to say that society doesn't value the "poor" one, but that it doesn't value your marginal addition to the field, as much) there are some hidden assumptions there, particularly surrounding externalities. But I think that those only affect edge cases and on the whole, still allow us to do relative comparisons.