Illogic:Patrick Fleenor, a libertarian-ish economist,
wrote this in the Christian Science Monitor:
Take the administration’s signature achievement: enactment of healthcare reform, aka Obamacare. This legislation subsidizes health insurance for low- and middle-income groups with taxes on high-earners, leveling material wealth but dampening economic growth by encouraging everyone to pare back on their work effort.
High-income workers have an incentive to work less since they get to keep less of what they earn. Low- and moderate-income workers face the same incentive because they can now maintain the same standard of living with even less effort.
To summarize:
| High-income workers | will have less incentive to work | because they will keep less of what they earn. |
Low- and moderate-income workers | will have less incentive to work | because they will keep more of what they earn. |
That's called the old switcheroo. Make the "incentive" for high-income workers
the money they keep, but for other workers
their standard of living, and conclude that there should be no taxation/redistribution. But you could assign the incentives in the reverse fashion and conclude the exact opposite. How about that?
posted by Quiddity at 10/28/2010 07:42:00 PM
but it's perfectly logical ugga.
The high earner's natural propensity is to work hard while the lower earner's is to be lazy, so it makes perfect sense that if we give the lower earners a reason to be even lazier, they'll take it.
Standard glibertarianism.
