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A comment on What if we tested laws before passing them?. Parent comment

Re:What if we tested laws before passing them? by DavidSJ on Monday December 13, 2010 @10:52AM (#2000784)
Perhaps it should be required that the net income from this lottery be 0.
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Re:What if we tested laws before passing them? by bhousel on Monday December 13, 2010 @11:07AM (#2000853)
That would be nice, but then you're not doing an experiment.
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Re:What if we tested laws before passing them? by adrianN on Monday December 13, 2010 @04:54PM (#2002111)
Why not? You can still observe how people behave differently if they have higher or lower taxes.
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Re:What if we tested laws before passing them? by bhousel on Monday December 13, 2010 @05:26PM (#2002212)
I guess that's true. But what I meant to say was that in order to arrange for the results to net a zero difference from what the government would collect normally, you're not really randomly assigning tax rates or running a lottery, you're just fixing people's rates at something other than what they would normally be.

Something about manipulating the conditions of the experiment (even a stupid thought experiment) to force a desired outcome doesn't sit right with me.

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Re:What if we tested laws before passing them? by ars on Monday December 13, 2010 @05:19PM (#2002182)
He means the higher and lower taxes would cancel themself out.

Not that the people in it earn nothing.

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