Sam Brownback wants to raise taxes

[Torie]

Muon2, your post did not communicate much. It was mostly jargon. We do know that a zero tax generates no revenue, and a 100% tax generates next to none. It is what in-between that matters, and the elasticity of how assiduously  folks will endeavor to change their behavior/financial transactions to avoid taxes, and how much their amount of toil will truncate as marginal tax rates increase (yes maybe it will increase at certain points in the formula to get enough net income to meet basic needs - one will work very hard working at a 90% marginal tax rate to avoid the alternative of starvation - good recipe for revolution that one), and the particular economic environment matters also - if not working at all means starvation (so the robustness of the social safety net works into the formula too). And you know what? I don't think anybody really knows. Just like nobody really knows, how much of the corporate income tax morphs into higher prices of goods, and how much is really a tax on capital. If somebody really does, they should give me a call.

The lack of a good and reliable data base of course is what fuels ideological rhetoric. Absent hard data, folks have more space to assume what fits within what they wish to believe, to effect a better fit between their ideology and reality. Who knew?