Taxation puts at risk discoveries that could increase well-being
“Subsidize the rich” won’t make it onto many political placards in this fall’s federal election or 2020’s U.S. presidential election. But the latest contribution to the academic literature on “optimal income taxation” suggests that in an ideas-based economy such as the one most people think we’re now living in, negative top marginal rates may well be the best way to help “the middle class and those working hard to join it” .
Unfortunately, despite its sensational conclusions, it’s not a fun paper to read. Like all contributions to the economics of optimal income taxation, a field dating from the early 1970s, it’s written mainly in math.
But it’s commonplace this century that with a big new idea you can conquer the world. Think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and so on. Of course, the people with the ideas aren’t necessarily at the top to begin with. Gates, Jobs, Bezos, et al., came from middle-class families. They ended up at the top because, apart from all the free benefits, their ideas could at least partly be monetized.
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