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A comment on The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks!. Parent comment

Re:The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks! by baddox on Wednesday January 02, 2013 @04:30AM (#4995946)
How do you figure? If I have the choice of increasing my labor by 20% (by some arbitrary metric, like labor hours per week) to increase my post-tax income by 20%, I might decide that is worth it and go for the higher income. If, on the other hand, I am currently at the top end of my current tax bracket, and the next highest bracket means that my 20% increase in labor will only increase my post-tax income by 10%, I might decide that isn't worth it and thus not go for the higher income.
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Re:The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks! by jacquesgt on Wednesday January 02, 2013 @04:46AM (#4995976)
But, with the higher tax rate, someone else might decide it's worth it to increase their labor by 40% so as to increase their post-tax income by 20%, whereas they only would have increased their labor by 20% without the tax effect. So, it really isn't clear that higher taxes lead to lower amounts of labor.
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Re:The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks! by prostoalex on Wednesday January 02, 2013 @05:32AM (#4996075)
Except that someone will be hitting the external limitations (only 24 hours in a day, human body needs non-billable hours for sleep and food) pretty quickly. Also, this is true as long as there are no opportunity cost alternatives (spending time with family, pursuing hobby).

In a nutshell, "High top marginal personal income tax rates are found to impede long-run productivity". Source on this is OECD, but original PDF link no longer works http://www.cato.org/blog/oecd-admits-high-personal-corporate...

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Re:The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks! by glenjamin on Wednesday January 02, 2013 @06:39AM (#4996203)
This assumes a linear correlation between labour spent and gross income earned.

The tax brackets are known to everyone, including those who pay the salaries - if you want to get someone to do that 20% extra work, and they'll want a 20% increase in net pay, then you can just do the math and pay the appropriate gross.

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