Economists disagree about a lot of things, but there is one basic law of economics that is pretty much the foundation for all others:\u00a0 People respond to incentives.<\/p>\n
We all know that incentives work.\u00a0 Some incentives are positive, some are negative.\u00a0 Any parent knows that there are two basic ways to affect children\u2019s behavior.\u00a0 You either reward them when they do something good, like wash the dishes, or you punish them if they do something bad, like staying out after curfew.<\/p>\n
Now it seems like our country is determined to raise taxes on the rich.\u00a0 The goal is to get more revenue by socking it to the rich, who have more than enough.\u00a0 If that actually worked, it would appeal even to me.\u00a0 After all, I certainly don\u2019t qualify as rich.\u00a0 But the problem is that we are actually taxing success.\u00a0 Sometimes, when you tax success, the only result is less success.\u00a0 That appears to have happened in Great Britain.\u00a0 They raised taxes on millionaires and now they have about half as many millionaires.<\/p>\n
Some of them just moved out of England.\u00a0 Perhaps that explains why so many obnoxious liberals with British accents now live in the U.S.\u00a0 Others don\u2019t appear to have moved, but they are reporting less income.\u00a0 It is hard to tell if this is because these millionaires are no longer millionaires or they just stopped declaring income.\u00a0 Either way, if the intent was to raise more tax revenue, it failed miserably.\u00a0 England actually lost tax revenue with this brilliant strategy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes if you are successful in taxing success, you succeed only in getting less success.<\/p>\n
TDM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Economists disagree about a lot of things, but there is one basic law of economics that is pretty much the foundation for all others:\u00a0 People respond to incentives. We all know that incentives work.\u00a0 Some incentives are positive, some are … Continue reading