1125
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
1125 points (98.9% liked)
World News
39129 readers
828 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It's not. If you accept that :
Then you accept that between those two extremes there's a tax optimum that for a given rate gives the most tax revenue. This is the Laffer curve.
no, it is propaganda. I mean, "Taxing at 100% also brings no tax revenue" is already a stupid statement, and is Tautologically contradictory, even more so in a progressive tax system (please look up what the even means, statistically believing in the Laffer curve also comes with a ton of other misconceptions about financial policy)
also some history to the Laffer curve, it is an unproven theory that basically always get trotted out by the wealthy to argue for lowering taxes, tho it ironically has been shown to have no predictive power whatsoever.
It's not. If you work 40h per week and can do overtime but that overtime is taxed at 100% (because yes, that's what marginal rate means, it's the rate the extra income will be taxed), virtually nobody will bother doing that overtime. The handful who do will probably not clock-in because anyway, there's no point since it will bring no income after taxation.
you're not very economically literate, are you? overtime pay is not taxed at the marginal tax rate, that's not what that is.
the marginal tax rate is the maximum rate your income will end up at, that does not however mean that all your income is taxed at the rate.
as a very simplified example, assume you have the tax brackets
and you earn $2500, the taxes you will pay are $1000 at 10% -> $100 the next $1000 at 20% -> $200 and the last $500 will be taxed at 30% -> $150
meaning, in this example, you are paying $450 at a marginal tax rate of 30% on $2500. now overtime can bump you up, for example, imagine you work a LOT over those 40h and earn $3200, now you're in the next tax bracket due to your earnings.
also, the whole point is to deny all income above a certain level, or do you really think your boss deserves 3000 times your pay? because he certainly isn't working 3000 times harder than you are.
Oh please explain to me how marginal rates work... 🙄
If your marginal tax rate is already 30% and you decide to earn an extra $1, that $1 will be taxed at 30% and you get $0.70 in your pocket. That's what "marginal" means.
All economic theories are unproven, approximations about how economists think people might behave. There's a reason it is often referred to as the 'dismal science'. Quite often they are based on counterfactuals and projections of what might have happened.
The Laffer Curve is not a rule which always reflects reality but it has explanatory power in certain situations, since logically there has to be a point where avoiding taxes becomes more appealing than paying them.
Regan, et al deploying the theory as part of their political rhetoric - potentially in bad faith - shouldn't discredit the concept itself because doing so would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. It's an ad hominen attack against an economic theory; a bit like saying capital controls are always bad because President Xi in China frequently uses them.
ok, so scientifically speaking "proof" is a mathematical concept only, physics doesn't prove shit, chemistry doesn't prove shit, no other science proves shit.
But economics, like every other science out there makes models, these models when applied to certain circumstances make predictions, we test these models by testing the predictions they make.
The more accurate the prediction the better and more relevant the model, the issue that economics has is that many people instead of looking at the actual science, take the fictional work and claim it reality, mainly because they believe some propaganda commissioned by really wealthy people, to keep their wealth. the Laffer curve is one such example because it allows rich people to invest into lower taxes and increased privatization.
The Laffer curve isn't bad because Regan used it, it's bad because it has a track record of not having any predictive capability.
Also, there exist mechanisms by what we punish tax evasion, taking the likelihood of tax evasion into account for the purpose of setting tax rates is self-defeating, in the assumption that any persons want the maximum amount of money for themselves would always try to evade taxes, no mater what the tax rate is.
I think we agree about the nature of scientific enquiry, how it is all based on inductive reasoning and cannot provide the certainty of mathematics. Additionally, it looks like we agree that the Laffer Curve has been used to justify bad policy in the past.
However, I don't think that the theory has been debunked in the way you are describing. There is broadly a difference of opinion between Keynesian economists who are skeptical of the theory and then Supply-Side economists who endorse it; and then a whole spectrum of views in the middle from Behavioural economists or other schools of thought who are more ambivalent.
Academics who do support the view have done empirical studies over the years that they believe suggest that the Laffer Curve is real, see:
It's a matter of live debate in the field regardless of your opinion of the theory.
sure, you have listed a few papers, and having skimmed some of them I'm a bit iffy to their relevance mainly as to what numbers they take as indicators what of and at least one had an issue where one of the more prominent indicators they picked is heavily influenced by other outside activity more so than the taxes.
but here's the thing, if it was just wrong all the time, it would have predictive power, the fact that it sometimes seems to be correct, and other times it being counter to predictions or being mostly non changing means that it's not a useful model, and a useless model is trash, and honestly I'm highly skeptical of supply side economics, it has produced relatively little in terms of economic stability, nor sustainability.
personally, I'm more inclined towards Post-Keynesian demand side economics, and unlike supply side economics, they have actually made predictive models that actually have predictive power
Funadmentally it makes sense that tax take is 0 at 0% and low (though not neccessarily 0) at 100%, but in practice it only ever used to advocate for lowering taxes no matter what they are set at currently. You never see people talking about governments being on the left side of the Laffer curve and therfore we should raise taxes.
There's also no evidence that I'm aware of that the curve is smooth, single peaked or even single valued and it is also likely highly dependent on myriad other factors, in short it's effectively useless except as a rhetorical device for small-staters to advocate slashing taxes and public services.