>HN requests that we avoid tone policing, but your insults are not appreciated nor necessary.
You made absurd errors in your comments and accused politicians of insane policies.
>However, you continue to receive a higher after-tax income
No. That happens under a certain subset of progressive tax systems. Specifically under bracketted systems working less might result in higher income after taxes.
>That isn't a fair way to share tax burdens.
Appealing to some notion of fairness is just stupid. Taxes do not exist to make the world fairer, they exist to fund government activities. I think punishing people for working more is pretty unfair.
The marginal utility argument is so stupid because it can be used to trivially argue against progressive tax systems. The real consequence of believing in the argument directly implies that nobody should earn more than X, for some amount of income X (like 50k) where after that the marginal utility is so low that it might as well can be given to the state to waste.
> That happens under a certain subset of progressive tax systems.
There is no tax rate system that will ever tax any income at more than 100%. If you earn an extra dollar, you may only ever take home $0.01 (because you owe $0.99 in taxes). You might even take home nothing in some hypothetical 100% marginal rate tax regime, but nobody has ever proposed a system where you owe more than $1 on any $1 of income.
> The real consequence of believing in the argument directly implies that nobody should earn more than X, for some amount of income X (like 50k) where after that the marginal utility is so low that it might as well can be given to the state to waste.
Yep, that's precisely the belief and it's well grounded in lots of research into happiness, utility and so forth. Now, as it turns out, nobody has the courage/conviction to actually impose a 100% tax rate for any income over $X, so the reality is that the tax systems at play in the real world do not in fact prevent anyone from earning more than $X. Given that even the highest rates ever imposed in western industrial democracies were far from that, this just seems like a strawman. Even at 90% (the highest US marginal tax rate), for every $1000 you nominally earn over the $X value, you take home $100, thus earning more than $X.
BTW, $X is much, much higher than $50k, but I suspect that this is just a typo on your part.
>There is no tax rate system that will ever tax any income at more than 100%. If you earn an extra dollar, you may only ever take home $0.01 (because you owe $0.99 in taxes). You might even take home nothing in some hypothetical 100% marginal rate tax regime, but nobody has ever proposed a system where you owe more than $1 on any $1 of income.
You didn't even read what I wrote. This was about income after taxes increasing when working less. Which happens in bracketted progressive tax systems.
>Yep, that's precisely the belief
I know. It is of course also the single easiest way to destroy any economy.
I really hate it if people like you just pretend to argue for something you don't really believe in.
I suspect you misread what I wrote as "a flat income tax", which is ironic since it is the terminology actually used by these candidates, even though I understand it to imply a flate tax rate.
You claimed it is "everyone pays the same amount".
>I suspect you misread what I wrote as "a flat income tax", which is ironic since it is the terminology actually used by these candidates, even though I understand it to imply a flate tax rate.
You are the one single person which doesn't understand that the politicians mean e.g. "10%". But instead you thought they meant everyone pays 1k. Just stop pretending.
You made absurd errors in your comments and accused politicians of insane policies.
>However, you continue to receive a higher after-tax income
No. That happens under a certain subset of progressive tax systems. Specifically under bracketted systems working less might result in higher income after taxes.
>That isn't a fair way to share tax burdens.
Appealing to some notion of fairness is just stupid. Taxes do not exist to make the world fairer, they exist to fund government activities. I think punishing people for working more is pretty unfair.
The marginal utility argument is so stupid because it can be used to trivially argue against progressive tax systems. The real consequence of believing in the argument directly implies that nobody should earn more than X, for some amount of income X (like 50k) where after that the marginal utility is so low that it might as well can be given to the state to waste.
I am taxed at around 40% by the way.