http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/17/857861/study-tax-cuts-rich-no-growth/
Can someone debunk this?
They're using GDP.
a) The rich in the US, more and more like the situation in UK or Europe, are generally the rich because they are the beneficiaries of State privileges. The call for tax hikes is really predicated on the idea that double-intervention is the cure for the ills caused by intervention. It's the same kind of reasoning behind union protection laws. The corporate fat-cats are protected by the government, so the cure for this, obviously, is for workers to also get in on the protection racket. The idea of dismantling the State-administered privileges that are causing the problem in the first place is, apparently, not an option.
b) Empirical studies prove nothing in this regard
Clayton -
So let's tax them at 100 %, no?
There is no logical reason to stop at 100%.
Well why wasn't there mass unemployment during this time period? And if GDP isn't an indicator of economic growth than what is adequate enough?
@EmbraceLiberty:
I'm sure the Egyptians also had low unemployment...
All joking aside, the point is that it is fallacious to make "full employment" an end-in-itself. As Hoppe states time and again in his lectures: in a free labor market, there is no such thing as involuntary unemployment.
EmbraceLiberty: Well why wasn't there mass unemployment during this time period? And if GDP isn't an indicator of economic growth than what is adequate enough?
Currently the U-6 unemployed number is ~14%, and that's offset by places like North Dakota that discovered oil and have incredibly tiny unemployment rates. Some states have a U-6 number as high as 22%. Is that mass unemployment?
How is the rates today relevant? Why wasn't there high unemployment back then when taxes were much more higher than now?
Clayton, iirc, the pyramids were not built by slaves.
lol@ "iirc". You were there?!?!
Iirc about my being there...
It depends how you define slavery. Most Egyptians were serfs. In addition to that, they owed corvee labour to the King. They can certainly be viewed as his slaves.
As I noted, I was joking. The point is that forced conscription into pyramid-building, road-building, the war machine, and so on, can of course guarantee a zero unemployment rate through involuntary employment. So what? We institute a disguised form of slavery to solve a problem that the market already solved effortlessly prior to government intervention... by definition, there can be no involuntary unemployment in a free labor market. And whatever employment there is in a free market is also, by definition, voluntary, by contrast to the State's forced labor schemes.
Higher top marginal income tax rate could help result in deflation (which is generally good) if a higher top marginal income tax rate, among other factors, would result in more tax evasion which means the money would be taken out of circulation (stored in an offshore bank account). However, the govt can't cause deflation only the market can do that.