Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Gunnar Zarncke's avatar

A different concern, more on the overall population level, might be that tax career agents will increase differences in outcomes, maybe significantly so. Individual that for whatever genetic or environmental reasons are predicted (correctly or not) to be low tax value will necessarily receive proportionally lower investments. This will drive social structures toward being less egalitarian.

Expand full comment
Berder's avatar

Well, there is an alignment problem of that kind, as there is in current private industry as well, but I wouldn't say that governments who administer income tax programs are really aligned with maximizing tax revenue either. The politicians are aligned with getting people to vote for them, which means they often campaign based on playing to the cognitive biases of their voters, and appeasing their corporate donors, rather than to any real goal like "maximizing total revenue." As long a politician can claim that their policy is going to improve everybody's income - and be believed by the uninformed average voter - then the politician can get re-elected, regardless of whether their policy actually does that. If the policy fails, that just creates an opportunity to blame the other side for the failure.

Expand full comment
16 more comments...

No posts