Friday, September 08, 2006

Flailing About For Clarity

Hmm. I'm gonna try to hash out an idea. Careful- this won't be pretty.

Here's a sort of counterintuitive conclusion I've been thinking on:
An increase in the curve or progressive tax rates would have the effect of increasing investment, and therefore improving the economy and increasing GDP.

The reasoning's not too hard, it involves greed.

Postulate 1: There is a high correlation between rich persons and greed.
Opinions differ. But I think this is true. Common experience shows that persons with money tend to want to a) hang on to it and b) increase their holding, which leads to:

Postulate 2: Most wealthy persons are risk averse.
This kinda dovetails with item 1 above- but it also kinda hits human nature in general. Most people won't take a risk that they don't have to, which brings us to the reasoning:

If a person has sufficient personal funds to maintain their lifestyle without taking on further financial risk, they won't take on that risk. Lower progressive tax rates, extending to no tax at all on dividends makes it easier to have sufficient return with little or no risk. So, there's no incentive to invest. So, lots of money sits on the sidelines. Conversely, if the easy return gets taxed, then the individual needs to invest more and in higher risk/return investments to get the eventual return that they need or want.

That's the idea anyway. As exhibit A, look to the average Libertarian businessman.