What do you think is the optimum tax rate to get people to work harder? 40%? 75%? 100%? Give us a number.
I think
(a) it depends on circumstances;
(b) there are a number of taxes, not one rate; to ask the question you ask is the wrong question, and basically an unanswerable one;
(c) while it is obvious to all of us (me included, believe it or not<g>) that if you tax too much, the incentive to produce is dimished, taxes are part of an overall financial system. Saying that one tax in isolation is "too high" or "just right" or "too low" is misleading.
(d) recall that we had a top rate of 90% in the 1950s, and had quite nice incomes and growth. It was lowered to 70% under Kennedy, and we had quite nice growth. It was raised in the 90s to 39%, and we had quite nice growth.
(e) Reagan lowered the top rate dramatically in '81, but then raised it, or rather, eliminated a great many loopholes to effectively raise the total amount of taxes collected twice in his remaining years, most famously and dramatically in 1985. He also raised taxes while governor in CA after lowering them, something not often spoken about especially by his admirers.
The short answer to your question, IMHO, as you can perhaps gather by now, is "It all depends." If our expenditures are in fact going up dramatically due to being at war, and lowering the top rate induces a larger deficit without actually either creating jobs or higher demand, why on earth would we do it? |
