I can’t tell James Brown is being serious. It’s terrifying that there a large amount of people out there who feel this way.

What I find depressing though, is that what brings together this mash of people is Radley’s focus and admirable work on criminal justice policy/drug war..etc, and in that area there is a solid consensus between (some not all) conservatives, liberals and libertarians — but yet not too much progress is made.

Still, there’s no remedy I can think of that doesn’t risk drastic unintended consequences and, more to the point, would involve extremely intrusive government measures, ripe for abuse.

Then I submit you’re not thinking hard enough. Here’s a remedy with no dramatic unintended consequences: Let’s add a bunch of new brackets to the top of the tax structure: $250,000-750,000 @ 40%, 750,000-1.5mil @ 45%, 1.5-3mil @ 50%, 3-5mil@60%, 5-10mil@70%, and so on.

There are no tribe of people born as The Rich.

That’s stupid. They’re called “white people”, who start with ten times the accumulated generation wealth on average as everybody else. Paris Hilton was definitely “born as The Rich.”

Part of the reason conservativism cannot adequately grapple with these economic disparities is because conservativism refuses to see how they come to be in place. In the conservative mythology, everyone who has wealth is a self-starting titan of industry who created new products, built new businesses, all while starting from zero and the most humble beginnings. That’s not economic reality; that’s wealth-worshipping hagiography. The truth is most of our nation’s rich are people connected to the ol-boy network who sup from a rotating buffet of corporate largesse while providing nothing in return. There’s a social class of parasitic CEO’s.

That’s odd–I have the same thought, but I always credit it to my liberal side.

Yes, it is speculative “what if” piece. And that involves a certain amount of ass-talking by its very nature. But the reaction here seems churlish when he states in the post that he would welcome a rational argument to show how he is wrong. Instead, all I see is “Hurr, stupid liberal!”.

He isn’t even saying that a 90% top marginal rate is the best policy, as far as I can tell. Just that, even if it caused everyone who hit it to “Go Galt”, the economy would still do just fine in the long run.

90% is extreme. But in the context of debating going from 25% to 35%, it is useful to think about what happens at the extremes.

You may not like it, but I’m not hearing a convincing non-ideological (positive, not normative) argument against it. “Government action is almost never justified” is not an argument. Outside of the Reason-Kool-Aid drinking circles, at least.

Have you considered that there might be a *reason* that most professional economists scorn the Austrian school?

You mean like Michael Phelps? He smokes and doesn’t accomplish anything does he? Your argument is full of holes…you must not smoke pot.

There are a few hundred million other examples if Phelps doesn’t flip your skirt.

Or, you can take the argument that denying me a Constitutional freedom isn’t justified because the state wants to keep the economy humming.

The term “cities” is irrelevent and should be replaced with the term “regions”. Stadiums are only a wealth transfer agent, not a wealth (or economic activity) creation agent.

For example: I represent a family of 4 with yearly recreation budget of $6,000. A stadium is built and now I have a budget of $8,000? Of course not.

“…money spent on this type of entertainment at this location would likely have been spent on some other form of entertainment if the stadium were not built. ”

http://www.swlearning.com/economics/policy_debates/stadiums.html

I’m pretty sure stadiums increase economic activity in cities, but the increased tax revenue is rarely enough to justify the subsidies. Either way, I’m interested in your links.

There’s a recent bloggingheads with Mark Shmitt (who I generally like) and Matt Yglesias (who I like more than most know-it-all 20 something bloggers). Matt makes the point that insiders/experts in a field often try to dismiss others with overly technical questions. While viewing this segment, I initially liked Matt’s point, but as it continued it seemed like a caricature of a young liberal blogger. I’m an expert in several aspects of utility energy, and I’ve never read an article/paper from any thinktanks from Greenpeace to AEI that weren’t laughably ignorant and useless. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here, but it’s hard to take anything these guys say seriously when it goes beyond broad philosophy (suggesting DeLong as the most qualified to talk him out of this seems to confirm the pessimistic viewpoint).

To the specific question . . . I’m about half libertarian and half conservative. My libertarian side tells me that government intrusion almost never justifies itself. My conservative side says that giant corporations are a product of American law and tax structure, so why not discourage the most odious good-ole-boy behavior?

Ah, so if come CEo is perceived as being bad then it is OK to tax them at a confiscatory rate.

We can argue about what Amelio was worth to Apple, but one has to factor in that when he took over as CEO Apple was hemorrhaging money AND had not future prospects while when he was booted Apple was positioned to partner with Microsoft despite still losing money. Amelio wasn’t hired to make Apple profitable overnight (and wouldn’t have taken the job) but was hired to restructure a failing company which he did.

Also if we only are talking about nominal salaries (Steve Jobs’ $1) then Amelio didn’t make millions, his made about $1.4Million in salary for a year and a half. To get to millions you have to include stock grants and options and planes in which case Jobs makes about half again per year what Amelio made in his year and a half.

I have nothing against Jobs and think he is an excellent buy at $20+Million/year. I do realize that Apple fanatics worship Steve Jobs (did he put subliminals into OS X?) however I ask that you not use Apple as an example, there is too much emotion on the part of Apple users about Apple for rational discourse. Sorry if I offend the religious/Apple worshipers, but.it has to be said

He casually throws off an exodus of baseball talent as a trivial consequence of this tax. But even if this alone were to happen, rendering Japan the #1 baseball league: the MLB would lose hundreds of millions, so would the TV networks, the stadiums and teams, cities that rely on stadium revenue…etc. It would be a Big Deal. That’s just baseball. Imagine the nationwide repercussions. Doesn’t he realize that people who make that kind of money are the most mobile people in the world? How can an a smart person think this is a good idea? Easy, he’s young, an “egalitarian,” and is trying to work backwards from what he wants to be true – whether that vision is attainable or not. It makes him hard to take seriously.

2.) Chet, I can agree that some CEOs get paid far too much even while performing terribly. There’s an issue where CEOs and boards of directors run in some of the same circles and know that what goes around comes around. Still, there’s no remedy I can think of that doesn’t risk drastic unintended consequences and, more to the point, would involve extremely intrusive government measures, ripe for abuse. also,

“The fact that Moynihan is able to point out that tax policy invariably swings back to favor the rich would seem to indicate that the rich simply aren’t going anywhere.”

There are no tribe of people born as The Rich. Maybe these policies are making more people rich.

Why on Earth would we think that’s true? And what kind of idiot would only take as compensation ten percent of his value to the company?

I don’t have a problem with Steve Jobs, for instance, getting millions. He did, after all, create a company that hires thousands and makes products I like. But somebody like Gil Amelio comes in and does nothing but lose the company money.

But the end result is that Amelio is compensated with millions and Steve Jobs works for a dollar a year. Does that really seem right to anybody? That the guys who come in after the fact and ruin an established business get paid better than the people who created the company? Let’s reward our titans of industry, by all means. Why do we have to reward the corporate pirates, too?

Hint: It has to do with the link between successful economies their production of wealthy people.

I don’t follow. If it was possible to tax the rich so punitively that they simply abandoned the country – went Galt – they wouldn’t be there to skew tax policy back in their favor.

The fact that Moynihan is able to point out that tax policy invariably swings back to favor the rich would seem to indicate that the rich simply aren’t going anywhere.

How exactly do you bear the burden of obscene compensation packages for CEOs?

All sorts of ways. I bear the burden of a government that’s always in their interests and never mine. I bear the burden of an increase in the price of goods to fund their lavish compensation. I bear the burden of corporations – some I depend on for services or goods – going under as the pirates at the top raid the portfolios and head for the escape hatches. I bear the burden of markets distorted by their absurd buying power. I bear the burden of their disproportionate use of public resources and their disproportionate gain from increases in the GDP.

It’s not just bailouts. Bailouts aren’t even the beginning of how the rich mooch off the rest of us.

If a company is paying someone $50Million/year that person is probably making at least $500Million/year for the company so if we posit a successful salary cap (that somehow doesn’t result in talent flight or Galtism or people just not working as hard), it would result in more inequality due to exploitation of underpaid top talent.