[wahern]

Yes, if pundits and lobbyists abuse this paper by relying on it to expound policies that it can't actually support. (Maybe they already have?) But that's a more general problem with how our political culture permits politicians and pundits to abuse science in their rhetoric.

There's also a problem in academia where intense pressures to publish and to be cited incentivize researchers to make radical claims, exaggerate the practical utility of their findings, gloss over weak points, etc, ripe for political fodder. I won't claim to understand all the technical details in the paper but I didn't sense any of that in the paper. The authors seemed to establish a fair analytical context, and they plainly articulated a limited policy conclusion--"it does not necessarily imply that taxes should be more steeply progressive". (Emphasis added.) Those don't feel like weasel words; just true and straight-forward without inviting misinterpretation.

It's a cool paper that credibly does what it sets out to: explore what can happen (in a formal and fair but, clearly, limited model) when you give rent-seeking a first-class treatment and carefully analyze how it interplays with the rest of the system.

By contrast, Arthur Laffer very actively advertised his research as justifying policies that it simply could not. And he continues to do it--he actively promoted the 2017 tax cut using the same intentionally misleading arguments he always has.