Frequently, we are told by the right that progressive taxation is bad policy, that it diminishes the motivation of entrepreneurs and “job creators”. But what is the relationship between money and motivation? Does more income lead to higher productivity? It turns out, if you phrase the question correctly, the answer is already well known, and the implications of that answer comprise today’s topic.
Continue reading “Money and Motivation: A Shocking Contradiction”
Recently, Mother Jones leaked a video of Mitt Romney talking to some potential donors, in which he says the following:
The video (ironically discovered by a grandson of Jimmy Carter) shows Romney claiming that 47% of Americans pay no income tax, that this 47% is dependent and has a mentality of dependency, and that he has no hope of gaining their votes. Since this amounts to almost half the electorate, he argues, it will take quite a bit of money from these donors to help him win the election. But who are the 47%? Are they really dependent welfare scroungers? That is today’s topic.
Sneaking up on the US government, slowly but surely, is the fiscal cliff–the agreement congress made to cut spending across the board in many sensitive areas if a bipartisan deficit reduction plan could not be agreed to. This was a bad idea from the outset, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the Democratic Party, and that’s both a problem, and the topic of today’s post.
A lot of people on the right have been exalting the virtues of “job creators”, agitating for policy changes like the lowering of taxes on the wealthy, the relaxing of regulations, and the augmentation of corporate subsidies so as to facilitate their special talents. Today I would like to juxtapose this view with that of Thorstein Veblen’s notion of the leisure class.
So Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan to be his running mate in the US Presidential election. It is a very telling choice. As regular readers will know, Mitt Romney proposed a tax policy that was more or less mathematically impossible without inflicting severe tax penalties on the bottom 95% of tax payers. It just so happens that Paul Ryan is guilty of precisely the same magical thinking. Let’s explore.
Benjamin Studebaker 