Re:Opinion: Getting rich has more to do with luck than talent
by eru on Sunday May 28, 2017 @09:56AM
(#14434384)
Thanks. I'll have to look through that material!
My 'bayesian' prior is that marginal tax rates should matter much more than total tax take (especially if the total take is well spent); and that micro-economic considerations suggest prima facie that blunting the incentives to produce less (income) more should lead to less production (of income). (That's the whole point eg behind a carbon tax.)
But I'd be interested in what kind of material would be able to overcome that prior. (Intellectually, I find the Georgism appealing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism). In practice, growing up in Central Europe, I've seen that social democracy works OK, even if not great. Singapore seems to be doing lots of things right. But of course, it might be hard to say exactly which parts of the mix are salient.)
After first very brief skimming: the paper on 'ntanet' treats a cut of marginal tax rates by 5% as major. Moving to LVT as single tax would cut all the marginal tax on labour and capital---quite a bit outside their studied parameters.
Another thing that I'll keep in mind when studying the material is that advertised marginal tax rates are often not the real marginal tax rates: people shift their behaviour to eg in the US take extra compensation in the form of lower taxed health-insurance than more cash in hand. (And rich people who can afford lawyers have even more scope. See Buffets lament that he's paying less tax on his income than his cleaner.)
Sorry for the rambling.
Happy to continue discussion via email, as we might be reaching HN's soft limit on thread-depth soon.
My 'bayesian' prior is that marginal tax rates should matter much more than total tax take (especially if the total take is well spent); and that micro-economic considerations suggest prima facie that blunting the incentives to produce less (income) more should lead to less production (of income). (That's the whole point eg behind a carbon tax.)
But I'd be interested in what kind of material would be able to overcome that prior. (Intellectually, I find the Georgism appealing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism). In practice, growing up in Central Europe, I've seen that social democracy works OK, even if not great. Singapore seems to be doing lots of things right. But of course, it might be hard to say exactly which parts of the mix are salient.)
After first very brief skimming: the paper on 'ntanet' treats a cut of marginal tax rates by 5% as major. Moving to LVT as single tax would cut all the marginal tax on labour and capital---quite a bit outside their studied parameters.
Another thing that I'll keep in mind when studying the material is that advertised marginal tax rates are often not the real marginal tax rates: people shift their behaviour to eg in the US take extra compensation in the form of lower taxed health-insurance than more cash in hand. (And rich people who can afford lawyers have even more scope. See Buffets lament that he's paying less tax on his income than his cleaner.)
Sorry for the rambling.
Happy to continue discussion via email, as we might be reaching HN's soft limit on thread-depth soon.