{"id":5200,"date":"2008-11-06T21:58:09","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T05:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5200"},"modified":"2008-11-06T21:58:09","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T05:17:57","slug":"by-all-means-greg-take-more-time-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5200","title":{"rendered":"By All Means, Greg, Take More Time Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg Mankiw is concerned<\/a> that if we raise taxes for the wealthy, he’ll have marginally less incentive to go to work, rather than spending more time with his kids.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: If you are one of those people out there trying to induce me to do some work for you, there is a good chance I will turn you down. And the likelihood will go up after President Obama puts his tax plan in place. I expect to spend more time playing with my kids.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Greg Mankiw, of course, spent years as the Bush administration’s chief economic advisor. Considering how that turned out, it’s probably best for everyone if Professor Mankiw spends as much time playing with his children as possible.<\/p>\n

Regarding Mankiw’s argument, the base assumptions underlying <\/a>his math <\/a>are ludicrous<\/a> ((See also the first comment to this blog post<\/a>.)) (as you’d expect from someone who once argued that we could pay off the deficit AND have huge tax cuts — how well did that work out, again?). Nor is it true that 100% of motivation for working is money. Nonetheless, specifics aside, Mankiw’s general point is correct: If we tax the 5% of highest income earners more, we can expect some of that 5% to work marginally less, all else held equal.<\/p>\n

However, most taxpayers will have more take-home pay under Obama’s proposed tax increase; many of these people will experience a marginal increase <\/em>in incentive to work.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in the real world, not everything is held equal. Under Bill Clinton’s economy, many entrepreneurs had more incentive to work, because marginally higher tax rates were more than offset by the higher profits available in a thriving economy. Similarly, Bush’s tax cuts will not be enough to counteract the damages to incentives caused by the Bush recession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greg Mankiw is concerned that if we raise taxes for the wealthy, he’ll have marginally less incentive to go to work, rather than spending more time with his kids. The bottom line: If you are one of those people out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}