Re: AltInst: Taxing Ability

Another amusing idea; with my IQ of 140 and my 5+ years
of college schooling, I'd be liable for about 10 times my current
income in taxes. Let's stick with the current system until we
have a better way of accurately measuring someone's true
economic potential.

    Karl
        <marX>

----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Hanson <rhanson@gmu.edu>
To: <altinst@cco.caltech.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 6:13 PM
Subject: AltInst: Taxing Ability

> The suggestion to tax people on earnings capacity instead of earnings has
> been around for a long time and is attractive in terms of economic
> efficiency. In this paper we reflect on the feasibility of such a system
> and give an exploratory empirical implementation. We apply the Leyden
> Welfare Function of Income, a survey based measure of an individual's
> welfare associated with income, to derive implications for ability
> taxation. Under the assumption that IQ and schooling reflect earnings
> capacity, we derive the tax functions using different criteria to
> distribute the utility loss due to taxation.
>
> http://www.elsevier.nl/cas/tree/store/pubec/sub/1999/72/2/1804.pdf
>
> Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
> Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
> MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
> 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
>
> [To drop AltInst, tell: majordomo@cco.caltech.edu to: unsubscribe
altinst]
>

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Received on Thu Nov 23 12:44:19 2000