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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

This one is a tough problem. On one side, I am in support of Silicon Valley pay being distributed across the entire US instead of being concentrated all in one place.

On the other hand, I don't like economies in small localities being disrupted because one person ends up getting a pay SO MUCH higher than majority of his neighbors for from revenue that is not sourced from the employee's home town.

Maybe the market should let it play out as it does. But at the end of the day, the tech bosses are the real winners when employees' pay get cut. And that is a net negative for all.

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An argument for higher corporate and (progressive) personal income tax rates.

This is the most depressing, dystopian desire.

Taxes are necessary to fund shared infrastructure and services. They're not supposed to overtly punish success or prevent people from earning a high salary.

There's an argument that high earners can (and possibly should) pay a higher share of taxes because they have the most ability to do so, but you seem to be just advocating taxing away people's earnings out of a jealous desire to not see anyone have more than you.

I wouldn't assume jealousy as a motive for this. Plenty of high earners call for less income inequality.

Progressive taxes do not disincentivize success.

They also don't tax high earners more. They tax the high end of high salaries more.

In other words, I pay the same amount of taxes on the first $50k of earned income as a ceo pays. We both pay the same rate on the next $50k, and so on. Then, he may pay a higher rate for that last $3m he earns. Seems completely fair to me.

In reality, he has a lot more resources and power to tax plan his income, so he will likely pay a lower effective tax rate than me anyway. So taxing the higher incomes, if anything, is needed to keep things fair.

But regardless, assuming those higher income brackets aren't taxed at an extremely high rate, no one is declining higher salaries or choosing to earn less because it will be taxed more.

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