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Comment by rrrrrrrrrrrryan | Hacker News Reader

According to the Laffer curve it should probably be 70% or so to maximize government income, but yes.

If you tax them 100% they'll just stop working or bail to another country, and then you collect zero tax revenue from them. At 70% most of them will just suck it up and pay.

(I realize France is a counterpoint here, but I'd argue it was a half-assed attempt, and they have neighboring French-speaking tax havens that have no real U.S. equivalent.)

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The Laffer curve is a fact-free zone except for at it's two end points.

The reality is that nobody knows for sure what the curve of revenue vs. tax rate looks like other than at those two end points, which makes the entire concept completely useless.

The most amusing thing about the Laffer curve folk is they mention it, and a breath later will talk about cutting taxes so they can drag the government to a tub and drown it in the bathwater: they don't even pretend to believe that we're at the point on the curve where cutting taxes will increase revenue.

It’s fascinating. Not only that is fact free, but it’s based on an assumption that the purpose of the government is to collect maximum tax value from the citizens. Is it thought?

It's not based on this assumption at all. In fact, the Laffer curve is named after an economist who did his best to provide "intellectual heft" to politicians who wanted to reduce taxation as far as possible (and maybe a little further than that), later summarized by one of them as "shrink[ing] the government to the point where we can drown it in the bathtub".

Thank you for the reference to the Laffer curve.

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