[michael_storm]

I've seen this point before, but it's not an argument for keeping rates low. "If we raise rates, the rich will just find ways to avoid them!" People find new ways to try to murder and steal all the time; that doesn't mean we throw up our hands and make it legal to do so.

The solution is to raise rates and fix loopholes, difficult a political lift as that may be.

[adventured]

Show me how high taxes in France have made them better off at the median. US wages are far higher at the median, US wage growth has been far higher for decades, US unemployment is routinely 1/2 their rate, US growth is routinely 3x-4x higher. They've seen nearly zero inflation adjusted growth for 20 years and have among the world's highest tax rates.

Their people are rioting week after week, because their system of high taxes has failed them, their middle class is being crushed anyway. What are they going to do, raise taxes further? The only thing left is to begin confiscation of wealth directly and then they're just the next Venezuela in waiting, accelerating their collapse.

I've seen zero evidence the US Government can be responsible with spending and allocate it to proper use as things are now. They've been wildly irresponsible for 40-50 years running, including in stealing trillions of dollars from Social Security over decades (and then lying about it) and on wasting trillions on unnecessary military spending. Why would I give them more money until they prove they can be good stewards with the $4.x trillion they get to spend now? Let's see them take the $750 billion in military spending down to $450 billion where it should be and redirect those resources to infrastructure et al.

[avmich]

> I've seen zero evidence the US Government can be responsible with spending and allocate it to proper use as things are now.

It's hard to argue one can get the same performance - on the same scale - as US government in projects it does.

How, for example, you measure overall lack of wars and general growth in prosperity, health etc.? What's the US part in that? Even if, say, Sweden manages lots of projects more efficiently per capita, how would you argue scaling that won't be worse than what US is doing?

It's a rather common opinion that governments are less efficient than private organizations. Still for some things we keep governments and keep trying to make them efficient, having headwinds which aren't typical in private world. Not sure if starting with "first reach efficiency..." won't get us to the same situation as US government is in right now - i.e. a prolonged shutdown.

[orev]

That’s not the point being made at all (that we need to force people to pay the high rate). The point this commenter is making is that you cannot point to the nominal tax rate and use it as evidence that high tax rates don’t cause harm, because it is not the nominal tax rate that matters, it’s the effective rate.

[gnicholas]

My primary point is that we can't look to the past and say "rates were super high before, and look how great we did". We need to realize those were nominal rates that no one ever really paid. It may make sense to raise rates on high-earners, but we can't justify it based on the past economic results during periods of high nominal rates.

[zenlikethat]

Sure, but isn’t there something to the argument that we should fix those loopholes and go after offshore evaders first before we crank up rates? Seems that ensuring the existing tax code is tidy and evaders are held accountable should be done first before making changes with potentially dramatic macroeconomic effects.

[michael_storm]

I can't edit my post anymore, but I should apologize for implying that gnicholas made that argument. As others have pointed out, they were just making a point above effective rates versus nominal rates. My mistake.

[jki275]

If you actually succeed in doing that, those people will turn in their passports and go somewhere that doesn't.