A justification for redistributive taxation must be desirable as a principle and not just in the particular;

This is one justification, which is consistent with the principle, is undesirable;

Therefore, this justification of redistributive taxation is not desirable as a principle.

It misses a lot of steps in a real argument questioning the principles behind redistributive taxation. Like, for example: In an ideal world, a height on taxation may be desirable as a utilitarian act, but it is undesirable for political reasons in the real world.

This seems plausible — the reason height is chosen in the Mankiw paper is because income as a “tag” doesn’t measure effort, but height (because it is strongly correlated with good outcomes) presumably is. A utilitarian may merely reject the height tax for other reasons: for example, a height tax would be seem arbitrary, and a tax seen to be imposed arbitrarily would create resentment that could threaten the institution of redistribution as a whole. Even if a utilitarian rejects a height tax, a utilitarian would probably endorse a tax that purely equalized marginal utility using all information and factors that lead into productivity.

Utilitarianism calls for us to think marginally; economists do this well. But people don’t think marginally. They ask, if we’re taxing height, why aren’t we taxing all inherent features that lead to productivity? Maybe we should, but unless we can do all of them, a height tax seems implausible and impractical. That doesn’t lead to the conclusion we ought to question utilitarianism.

Believing in a principle as philosophy does not lead to the consequence that every policy consistent with the principle ought to be advocated for at every moment. This is what gets Yglesias angry, I think. There are some libertarian things our society could do that run deeply against our moral intuitions. That doesn’t necessarily refute libertarianism…

1) Mankiw (who has a Ph.D. in Economics) will no longer write about philosophy, and

2) Yglesias (who has a B.A. in Philosophy) will no longer write about economics.

That would certainly make me happy. I’d be even happier if:

3) Everybody with just a degree in Journalism will no longer write about anything but journalism.

The improvement in public discourse would be immense.

So – perhaps if you find a little, unexplained crease like this – how can you test whether you yourself are an intellectual crackhead? Obviously, if there was some trivial test, there would be no such thing as intellectual crack. Everyone would learn the test and remember it, and apply it to any doubtful intellectual material that seems to be headed in the direction of their nose. Perhaps it would be a liquid test, carried in a little eyedropper. “Wait!” you’d say. “I can’t snort this! The paper turned pink! It must be crack!”

Priceless!

I liked the second link Matt Yglesias link best.

I remember when I first read it how it made my jaw drop.

At the time Matt was very vigorously defending a solid and respected economic theory that really hasn’t been empirically proven.

According to this guy there are no examples of the theory being successfully practiced.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/12/fiscal-policy-a.html

And I don’t recall anyone ever answering his challenge.

I don’t think it is even worth bringing up fiscal stimulus as tax cuts vs spending.

Yglesias’ weirdest claim, that economists dominate public discourse with low quality philosophy, seems completely absurd. There is obviously great overlap between the fields, and arguments should be debated on their merits. It’s simply an ad hominem, but applied to a class of individuals. (I don’t know enough Latin / rhetoric to describe it better than that.)

The secondary claim, as to what is the “main” or “primary” justification for redistrubutive taxation seems like a pointless argument. There are certainly a variety of reasons that it actually exists. For Mankiw to claim it is the primary justification is a hard thing to prove or disprove. However, Yglesias does not really respond to this except to say there are other people that have come up with justifications for it, which doesn’t actually say anything about what those reasons are, whether they are right or wrong, etc.

As far as whether to trust moral intuitions on all issues, I think is a case where I’ve learned a lot from reading the comments and Robin’s posts. The basic concept that we choose systems that seem to satisfy our moral intuitions seems true to me, which is why Mankiw’s arguments that we have to consider the reductio ad absurdum implications that those systems suggest seems good to me as well. In short, utlilitarianism seems to be troublesome justification for redestributive taxation.

If you really don’t want a height tax, then the best thing to do is to trash this assumption, then there would be no need for height taxation.

For example, tall people could claim that the are being discriminated and hated by other people. Therefore, tall people would have some loss of utility gained by height discrimination that would counter the “beniefts” that being tall would grant.

Tall people could also argue that they may have health problems as a result of being tall, and so a tax on them would be unjustified in that sense.

The best way to knock down Mankiw’s argument is to spend tons of money creating scientific experiments and studies that end up proving that “tall” people also have major problems as a result of being tall, that tall people DON’T have a better life than short people. Even if these studiesfail to dispel the belief that tall people have a better life than short people, it would end up making it harder for policymakers to determine the necessary taxation amount needed to counter-balance the utilitarian advantage tall people have, since they have to take these studies into accounts.

The end result would be, at worst, a nominal height tax.

If I’m reading this right it seems that you’d like to retain belief in a framework that includes a conclusion that you reject, until a better framework comes along.

I distinguish between holding on to a theory until a better one comes along and believing it. Holding onto a theory is like keeping the undefeated champion fighter in the arena until someone else finally defeats him. It is not the same thing as actually believing that the champion is not going to be eventually defeated. Robin may actually believe his fighter will remain undefeated for all time (analogous to “believes his theory is true”), but all I agree with is keeping the fighter in the arena.

Clearly, Robin will not let his fighter be defeated by mere intuitions (analogous to “the favor of the audience”). If the audience boos at the fighter standing alone in the ring, then the fighter still stays in the ring. What is not clear to me is whether there is any way in which Robin would conceivably recognize that his fighter has been defeated. I suppose that, while Robin may not be persuaded by intuitions, he may be persuaded by a better theory. As for what constitutes a better theory, that may be down to intuitions. But bare intuitions by themselves, as we have seen, are not sufficient to change Robin’s mind.

If I’m concerned with improving the framework to account for this deficiency, I’d engage in a long and complicated examination of why exactly utilitarianism led to this unfortunate result and how we might repair the matter.

Yes but first things first. Step one is to recognize that there is a deficiency, and you’re not going to do this if you treat the framework like a smorgasbord. Until people get to step one there’s no point in graduating to step two. Mankiw wrote a paper that gets people to step one. In response to a query about the relevance of his paper, he wrote a brief blog post explaining that this was the point of the paper.

If I’m interested in exploiting this fact to embarrass my political foes

I doubt it was very easy to write that paper. Now you want him to hold off on that paper until he writes a book that proposes a superior alternative to utilitarianism?

That’s like demanding that Michelson and Morley avoid publishing their results until they can come up with the special theory or relativity. (Not that I think this rises to that level of importance, it’s just what comes to mind as a point of comparison.)

Alan Crowe has a good explanation of how one man’s reductio ad absurdum is another man’s proof of necessity. Robin & Greg agree with if A then B. Mankiw says not B, therefore not A. Robin instead affirms B.

I think economists often criticize policy. This contradicts a claim that they believe whatever is (legal) is good.