QOD
If people making above 250,000 a year plan on cutting back to make less money and be taxed less, isn’t that a good thing?
I think they call it supply and demand. As they supply less, demand will still be just as abundant and someone else will pick up the work their lazy unpatriotic asses leave out there.
Isn’t it also dumb? Assuming you are in competition with someone else, I would think working less could hurt you. My guess is, those saying they are going to work less, aren’t and won’t and can’t. I almost feel sorry for people getting taxed more that are making $250k plus a year…
These are silly, silly people and I doubt they’ll do anything besides talk.
Silly people. And most of them are not in the $250,000 club (top 2% of earners) to begin with. So if they work less they get paid less.
… or they lose their job to the guy/gal willing to put in the hours.
We only have the history of human experience both here and abroad to show that if the reward decreases, the effort to attain it does in aggregate .
Reward? History?
Link required.
The “reward” is only decreasing as a function of the contraction of the economy. There is still — if not more — incentive to make sure that if you are making upper 2% money to make sure that you still do. Lots of these folks are working for banks and consultants and software companies and so on and will certainly have management who won’t be impressed with less effort.
I really think that they should drop out. One of the things that people worry about alot are opportunities for younger people, especially since boomers are working forever. This is my argument for cleaning house at banks. There are plenty of eager up and comers who would be delighted at the challenge.
We only have the history of human experience both here and abroad to show that if the reward decreases, the effort to attain it does in aggregate .
I just put that through this neat bullshit-o-meter thingy I picked up at walmart and I think what he just said is:
I used the word aggregate in a sentence to make these people think I know economics
yep david, you are right. Once people started taxing money, no one wanted to make any. Bravo. Well thought out.
It’s no wonder Smitty left you guys
Funny, that. There were still rich people when the top rate was 90%.
This is where the whole notion of “Galting” is getting stuck on too narrow a definition, one where John Galt encouraged the top people to go on strike in Atlas Shrugged. By sticking to the narrow definition, it gets easy to mock the idea, because relatively few will do it.
But if you look at it in the larger sense, as an encouragement for people who can structure their income to do so in ways that minimize their tax liability, it really does mean something.
We have a perfect example of the wealthy altering their economic patterns in response to higher taxes: the ill-conceived “luxury tax” of the early 1990s. What happened? Well, some of the people considering certain luxury items were probably priced out of the items by the 10% tax, and others decided not to buy at the higher prices. Some took the very sensible economic decision to buy the things they wanted abroad, away from the luxury tax. We all saw what happened to the domestic boat-building industry: the wealthy sneezed, and the workers in a few industries caught the flu.
And now it’s happening again, though not due to an actual tax this time.
I find it interesting that y’all seem to support the things President Obama is doing to either encourage or discourage certain economic activities with the tax code and teh stimulus package, actions based on the economic notion that, in the aggregate, the economic decisions taken by the people will change to accommodate the tax changes. Yet, when it comes to taxes being raised on high producers, you scoff at the notion that these changes would have any economic behavioral impact.
A little intellectual consistency here would be a welcome change.
If you are making more than 250K you are already doing work to shelter what you can from the taxman. It has always been thus — even, really if you make less than 250K.
And if you hadn’t noticed, the markets in luxury goods all over the world are hurting. Just like all of the other markets. What is true, is that the last time tax rates were at this level, it didn’t not stop economic development activity and certainly did not slow down the Internet bubble. What did happen the last time the tax rates were higher was that the government was able to retreat from the credit markets — no longer in competition for operational credit with businesses. Meaning cheaper and more plentiful credit for business. You can argue that that helped along the Internet Bubble, but getting the government out of the credit market is an absolute good. That won’t happen here, but will certainly reduce the amount of money the government has to borrow to keep running.
So Republicans don’t really believe that “a rising tide lifts all boats” I guess. Making the economy better will help rich people as well as poor people. Some poor people now are formerly rich people. Do you think they’re worried about the top tax rate right now?
We only have the history of human experience both here and abroad to show that if the reward decreases, the effort to attain it does in aggregate
The record of history also shows that people will strive to increase their reward even if it means millions live in poverty – even those same people who helped them build up their reward. That is, until the poor rise up every couple of generations and cut off their damn heads.