Author: s1e2t3u4p5

Writing for TownHall.com, Alan Reynolds provides an elegant analysis of how taxation influences one’s motivation to work. From his article:

I have discovered a fool-proof strategy for beating the income tax, the Social Security tax and the Medicare tax: Lower your income.

After analyzing his own (tongue-in-cheek?) experiences with this strategy, he concludes:

The sensible solution is to stop working at 62-65, or to work as little as possible — like running a 12-cylinder engine on 4 cylinders. Yet this is a dangerous message to send to our rapidly aging population. Future growth of tax revenues, and of the economy, will be heavily dependent on whether or not older Americans choose leisure over work.
Between 2000 and 2020, the population between the ages of 25 and 54 is projected to increase by only 3 percent while the population over 55 increases by 63 percent. If older people shun work, there will be virtually no growth in the labor force aside from immigration. America’s medium-term challenge is not a shortage of jobs but a prospective shortage of willing and able workers.
Even if only a fraction of future seniors respond in the ways I have to tax penalties on work, money flowing into the Treasury, Social Security and Medicare from an aging workforce will slow even more than expected.
A few years ago, the Russell Sage Foundation (which routinely bankrolls egalitarians) sponsored a collection of papers turning Ayn Rand’s opus into a question, “Does Atlas Shrug?” The authors could not get the right answers because they did not ask the right questions. Work effort cannot be measured by hours on the job. Work effort is more like a dimmer switch than a light switch; we adjust it by degrees. And mature, educated taxpayers are not docile sheep but wily foxes. When tax collectors set out to punish extra effort and investment, we get the message.

See the full article for additional information.

ChronWatch.com has published an op-ed by Peter Schwartz titled “The Threat of the Paternalistic State” that begins:

A precondition of freedom is the recognition of the individual’s capacity to make decisions for himself. If man were viewed as congenitally incapable of making rational choices, there would be no basis for the very concept of rights. Yet that is increasingly how our government views us. It is adopting the role of a paternalistic nanny, zealously protecting the citizen against his own actions. In the process, our freedom is disappearing.
Obvious examples of this attitude are laws mandating the use of automobile seat belts and motorcycle helmets. Gambling is another area in which the state believes it must keep the individual from harming himself. New York State, for example, has threatened to sue Citibank for allowing credit cards to be used for Internet gambling and for “making profits off the financial hardships of compulsive gamblers.”

See the full article for further elaboration.

In his latest op-ed, Ed Hudgins, Washington Director for The Objectivist Center, calls April 15—tax day in the US—a day of moral shame. Hudgins writes:

Politicians tell us, “We know you’re not up to the burden of raising your own children, earning enough money to educate them, insuring yourselves against illness or unemployment, saving for your retirement, tying your own shoes or wiping your own noses without our help. Don’t worry, we’ll give you all you need.”

If we have any integrity we should spit on such offers. We should resent the theft of our opportunities to experience the pride that comes from taking responsibility for our own lives as well as the theft of our money by tax collectors to make good on these politicians’ promises. Rather, we should tell our government to protect our lives, liberties and property—that is, our freedom and independence—and otherwise leave us alone. Instead, a majority of citizens applaud politicians and candidates who drag them further down into the depths of dependency.

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