Something I don't understand that is sure to get me flamed

[tim]

So there's this idea that if we increase taxes on the rich, then rich people will stop working so hard (that the rich work hard is already questionable, but let's go with it) and, I don't know, stop producing all the social goods that rich people produce.

I mean, I think it would be great if just increasing taxes, by, say, 2% on household income above $500,000/year would make some of those high earners say, "Goshdarnit, it's not worth it for me to earn this much money if the government is just going to take it away. I better get a job teaching in an inner-city elementary school instead, brb." But somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.

Is it *really* that easy to stop people from being greedy? I'm not sure greed would deserve its deadly-sin status if it was that easy to eradicate.

And while I'm at it, what's up with accusations of "class warfare"? Rich people have been waging war on everyone else since, oh, whenever it was that some people started being rich. (In fact, that's how you get rich in the first place.) The rest of it is just class self-defense.

Comments

[asrabkin]

I don't see why the argument makes any assumption that income determines value. The argument is that we're foregoing some real value when high-income workers work less, because there's some quantum of productive work that they could have done, and didn't.

I agree that government revenue is also potentially useful to society, depending on what it's spent on.

But I don't know how to quantify or measure "value to society." Absent some way of actually quantifying, measuring, or even describing what the opportunity costs are on both sides, I don't see any way to meaningfully discuss which cost is bigger.

[juli]

Value to society, I think, doesn't necessarily need quantified. Indeed, that it can't may be a useful point of argument. "We can't determine whether rich people working another half hour a week help society at all, let alone in which amount, and rather than putting our faith in an unknowable black box, we will risk that in favor of something knowable, like feeding starving people or saving lives."