The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @10:18AM (#43632442)

> In the first society, the probability of the artist completing and selling that masterpiece is correspondingly lower, since money is a strong motivator and even artists have bills to pay.

I live near the (supposedly) largest art market in the USA, and I know a large number of artists here for whom two things are true:

1. they cannot make a living from just their art. 2. they will create art whether they make a living from or not.

Thus, the claim that taxes on their art income act as a disincentive to create just holds zero water for me. In fact, less than zero. It betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of why all the artists I admire actually do what they do.

This also applies to most of the people I admire in almost every field. I don't know of any example where the motivation was such that increased taxation would have acted as a disincentive. That's true even for Bezos @ amzn.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by nickpp on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @11:27AM (#43633211)

Taking advantage of self-driven people and stealing the results of their hard work is something communist dictators tried quite hard. Also brainwashing people to work their asses off for some other reason than the selfish one.

It didn’t work. The society produced less and less value, crappier and crappier quality, uglier and uglier and grayer and grayer.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @11:42AM (#43633393)

Also, none of my artist friends would say that they were being "taking advantage of". I have no idea why you'd try to connect the situation I've described in the US art world to communist dictators, other to make some facile point that isn't relevant or even correct.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospec... by PaulDavisThe1st on Wednesday April 09, 2025 @11:40AM (#43633371)

If you think that Bezos was motivated to create amazon because the taxes were just-so, you're delusional.

There are numerous books on this topic. Obviously not everyone agrees with them, but Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards" is an excellent starting point for reading about what we know about the connections between motivation, creativity and rewards.

[ Parent | on HN ]