[lbo-talk] Progressive taxation vs flat tax

[Shane Mage]

Justin wrote:
"Have you tried the argument from diminishing returns? (This is in 
fact the precise rationale behind progressive taxation.) The point 
being that a dollar means a lot less to someone who makes a $200,000 
a year than it does to someone who makes, say $10,000 a year..."

Didn't you mean to say diminishing marginal utility of income?  This is
precisely why the great "neoclassics" Marshall and Pigou thought
of themselves as socialists--and why the co-founder of
"marginal utility" value theory, von Wieser, called his theory
"the political economy of a communist society"--and why
todays epigone economists like Samuelson and Friedman totally
reject marginal utility theory in favor of "indifference curves"
and "Pareto optimality."

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even 
downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true."  (N. 
Weiner)