Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

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I'm annoyed. I came here to point out who the heritage foundation is, but bazzargh has it covered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7062656

TFA complains about "marginal income rates of %43" as though this were the general case. For what it's worth, %43 is the highest capital gains rate, the highest income rate is %39, which is for incomes of over 1.8MM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States

With that out of the way, the highest marginal tax rate was around %90 during the boom of the 50's and 60's, and is lower now than during Regan administration for example: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-...

If one is a member of the very highest tax bracket, then one might be tempted to measure freedom by the myopic comparison of income tax rates. It would be unsurprising if the Heritage Foundation were concerned about the very highest tax rate in great disproportion to it's nominal consequence.

There are other economic freedoms: freedom from excessive gov't granted monopolies (patent/copyright), freedom from protectionism, tariffs, limited work visas, etc. Even rich guys driven to distraction by high tax rates ought to be able to find something say about these sorts of things in an article about economic freedom, but no specific structural reforms are proposed. News flash: partisan think tank doesn't like taxes, president.

For the rest of rest of us, real freedom also means not being imprisoned for interacting with other consenting adults in ways that are illegal, and not being denied due process in various ways such as: torte reform, civil asset forfeiture, being spied on by agencies who are immune from judicial review, etc. Could we take a break from wringing our hands about the welfare of the ultra-rich, and work some of that stuff too?

For the rest of rest of us, real freedom also means not being imprisoned for interacting with other consenting adults in ways that are illegal...

You mean interactions like paying a consenting adult $7.24/hour to clean your bedroom? Selling a consenting knowledgeable adult a substance which has not passed FDA review? Paying a person without a medallion to drive you to a different location?

As far as I know, you don't escape from patent/copyright or work visa issues by travelling to other nations. Incidentally, those things are included in the Heritage rankings, and collectively get more weight than tax/govt spend.

http://www.heritage.org/index/about

>> You mean interactions like paying a consenting adult $7.24/hour to clean your bedroom? Selling a consenting knowledgeable adult a substance which has not passed FDA review? Paying a person without a medallion to drive you to a different location?

When I said the article proposes no particular structural reforms, and ought to take on protectionism, &c. I meant that these are exactly the sort of issues I would like to have seen addressed.

It seems like we have in common more than you think :)

The index is by a conservative think tank but its certainly not just about taxes. I understand its been impacted in the past by things like the Kelo decision. Anyway it says its these four things equally weighted:

Rule of Law (property rights, freedom from corruption); Limited Government (fiscal freedom, government spending); Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom); and Open Markets (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom).

I see. I may have failed to really understand the index; In my defence the article seemed to dwell unduly a small part of it's composition.

At the least, these guys need better PR. That article seemed pretty out of touch with those of us in the rest of the tax brackets. Instead of complaining about top tax rates they should be convincing me that net prosperity will increase, even for middle class chumps like me, if we deregulate, lower _everyone's_ taxes, abolish the minimum wage, get rid of medicare/medicaid, get rid of public health insurance and unemployment insurance and welfare and food programs and social security, and &c.

That sounds like a hard sell, and I think these guys are afraid to address those issues head on in a public forum like WSJ, so they complain about other stuff that's less relevant.

It's probably more the slant that the WSJ put on the ranking and what makes up the ranking.

I think making a link between economic freedom and economic growth is a tough enough sell without giving individual policy prescriptions. Ideally people should be informed enough to know what tradeoffs they are making when they vote for policy choices. It's OK to vote yourself a bit less economic growth for other things you want, but for many they aren't aware of those tradeoffs.

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