35 sats \ 5 replies \ @didiplaywell 12 Sep \ parent \ on: Income Taxes Don't Disincentivize Work econ
I'm purposely multiplying hypotheses because it relativizes your claims, which also fall in second order categories. You're assuming that a tax increase mathematically gets offsetted by more work when in reality it makes the living standard more precarious and work hours less valuable. It's a lose-lose outcome.
But that was not my first order argument, that one was the second one: if you cut taxes, the only effect you get is a net increment in working hours because people living off of those taxes now have to integrate to the workforce. You have now caused a net increment in work incentive. In your reasoning you are neglecting from the equation the state itself, which is composed of a mass of people parasiting your work. Take that income from them and you now do get a first order effect consisting in a mass of millions of parasites having now to work full time to earn a living, offsetting the work others now don't have to do anymore: as of 2024 the USA haves a mass of 20 million people "working" for the state, and a mass of 40 million living off from welfare. That's a total of 60 million living from 100 million workers of the private sector, that means that people would need to work 60% more to earn what they would without having to maintain the other part. It's physically impossible for all of the 100 million workers to work 16hrs a day on average, so the net result is that you are getting less working ours from the able-working population, not more, in exchange of precarization, not same living standard. If you abolish taxes, you integrate that 60 million people into the private sector getting a 60% increment in working hours, not less hours.
Your point is interesting, but it's beyond what I'm talking about.
In a comparative static analysis, we try to hold everything constant except for the factor in question. That lets us identify isolated effects.
If leisure is a normal good, then when people's budgets are reduced by increased taxes, they will respond by consuming less leisure. Ergo, they will work more.
Also, increased taxes don't necessitate increased government bureaucracy. The MMT weirdos advocate taxes just for the sake of fighting inflation, not for government revenue. Most spending in the US government isn't on bureaucracy, it's just transfer payments and debt service.
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If leisure is a normal good, then when people's budgets are reduced by increased taxes, they will respond by consuming less leisure. Ergo, they will work more.
I understand but again, be mindful that that haves a practical limit, it's not an unconstrained lineal tendency: the most you can humanly do is to increment your working schedule to be from monday to monday 12hs per day. Any increment beyond that will literally kill you, so taxes beyond that will progressively precarize the worker. By that point you are clearly living in North Korea so let's do as you said: let's fix things, so you are living in the USA, you have a minimum standard, so most you will do is to work up to 60hs a week in extreme cases. You will not work more than that so tax increments will start just eating your standard by that point, without you being able to work any more to compensate that. By that point working so much is meaningless so you start working less because you are not making it anyways, and that's what happens in real life.
Also, increased taxes don't necessitate increased government bureaucracy.
It doesn't haves to. You don't need explicit taxes when you have implicit taxes, AKA the infinite money machine. Explicit tax increments are not a way for the government to get financed but a way to coerce and control the population. The explicit tax is a laughable fraction of what the government amasses from emission and future emission AKA debt, which is what goes into maintaining the massive bureaucracy and high neo-feudal elite.
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All of that is correct, or near enough that there's no reason to quibble over it.
Again, though, the point of comparative statics is to think through what effects a particular change will have on a particular factor. This means we are starting from the current situation and modifying it in some marginal way. America is nowhere near the cases you're describing.
The purpose of this post was to point out that people aren't carefully thinking through their rhetoric on income taxes and they're saying contradictory things, and then explain what's going on economically.
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I understood your point from the beginning, my argument was that its a too much restricted and short-lived stance so that it's not meaningful enough to relativize things or put the affirmation of "taxes disincentivize work" to test.
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Ok, I remain unconvinced of that, while granting that you raised interesting points.
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