Good, more room for the next generation.
> would you put in a million dollars of effort to net a quarter of that in return?
Even if I was paying 27% on the first $10MM, putting in $1MM worth of effort would get me a return of 170% per year.
Because they want the things money can buy.
> Would you take up a career where despite long & expensive education, long hours, hard work, and lives-in-your-hands responsibility, you kept just 27% of your income?
Maybe, maybe not, but, anyway, that's not how marginal rates in a progressive tax system work. Even if the marginal rate that kicks in at $10 million is 73%, that means you only keep 27% of the amount after $10 million, and some greater amount of the part below $10 million. Obviously, an increase in the top marginal tax rate decreases the incentive to work to increase income once you've reached the annual income level at which the higher tax rate applies, but doesn't it really hurt anyone that people already making at least $10 million/year prioritize making additional income less over other priorities?
I want to encourage people to make insane amounts of money, because that is largely the result of far-and-above productivity which everyone else benefits from. Jobs are created, desirable products/services are generated at affordable costs, money is invested (even banked "cash" gets loaned, and extravagant luxuries create markets), and the general standard of living is raised.
The cost of discouraging effort is never included in these "soak the rich, redistribute the wealth" equations.
Really, if the greatest cost to society you can point to of increasing the top marginal income tax rates is "fewer Ronald Reagan movies", I don't think you are making a very strong case.
> Such rates denied both the public at large from products they wanted, and the government tax revenue.
The case that it denied government net tax revenue requires more than Reagan not making movies, it requires a whole-economy comparison of what activity occurred instead and the actual taxes applied against that activity.
> I want to encourage people to make insane amounts of money, because that is largely the result of far-and-above productivity which everyone else benefits from.
This "trickle down" concept is a widely held article of faith in some parts of the population, but not a position well supported by evidence.
> The cost of discouraging effort is never included in these "soak the rich, redistribute the wealth" equations.
The "cost of discouraging effort" is very hard to empirically establish without ambiguity, and there are sharply different opinions on what it actually is. What proponents think that cost is usually accounted for in where the various parameters are set; people who have different views of what the cost is, obviously, disagree that these settings are correct.
Are you seriously asking why anyone would consider a career in which they are "only" able to keep 27% of any money above $10 million they make in a single year?
You're incredibly out of touch if you don't think most people would kill for that opportunity.
> Would you take up a career where despite long & expensive education, long hours, hard work, and lives-in-your-hands responsibility, you kept just 27% of your income?
Yes I would absolutely do that for the privilege of keeping only 27% of anything more than $10 million a year I make. This is an incredibly good problem to have.
> would you put in a million dollars of effort to net a quarter of that in return?
This is not how marginal tax rates work. Consider putting down Atlas Shrugged and consulting a remedial math textbook.
As I work to make my owns end meet, I'm quite aware of the consequences of having a ~50% tax rate, putting out $X00,000 effort just to net half that.
And yes, I'm quite aware of the technical errors in my presented math. This is a casual forum, not a peer-reviewed paper. What baffles me is how others here won't do the remedial math showing that a 100% tax rate on everything over $1M wouldn't come close to paying for what Bernie et al promise and those here expect as obvious (never mind the always-neglected effect high taxes have on high productivity).