Category Taxing the rich
Does it matter whether rich people really like money?
Responding to the ongoing debate among economists about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal of a 70% tax rate on the very richest Americans, Chris Dillow says: “I’ve never been comfortable with the marginal utility argument for high top tax rates. One reason why the rich are rich is that they value an additional dollar highly”. I […]
The Global Rich: Creators or Predators?
Branko Milanovic (the guru of global inequality) has made the intriguing suggestion that someone should seek to quantify the extent to which multi-billionaires acquired their wealth through socially valuable activities. He suggests that we should take the top 1,500 billionaires in the world and rate each on the extent to which their wealth was “acquired […]
A tax on conspicuous consumption?
In a recent Vox article, Matthew Yglesias argues for punitive income and inheritance taxes. His logic is that these taxes can have benefits beyond just raising government revenue – by deterring the high pay and large bequests that encourage socially harmful inequality, they can be beneficial even if nobody pays them.Yglesisas repurposes the reasoning that […]
Social Problems Are Like Maths 