Hey look, more poor shaming! That puts you in the same camp as shifty, the stupid ****wad camp!

What do you think intrinsically adds to that sentence.

In any case you should probably tell GiveDirectly and organisation that donates money directly to the poor, GiveWell a charity effectiveness evaluater that has GiveDirectly second in it's list of top charities and Good Ventures a philanthropic organisation that has just donated $25m to give directly.

I know the work is in Africa not the US but I'm pretty sure giving poor people money helps poor people.

I have no issue at all with charity helping the poor, think it's a wonderful thing. I disagree with the idea that rich people don't need all that money so let's force them through higher taxes to give money to poor people.

I dunno... The massive (and unlikely) political movement necessary to get Bernie into the White House would bring a pretty big mandate with it. Probably big enough to enact a few policies that would be longshots for a typical administration.

stfu idiot go be emotional somewhere else

The super rich have money far out of proportion to their effort. Rather it is, for the most part, in proportion to the good they do for people (in total. Which usually means very little good but it reaches many people) . The second reason is used to argue against higher taxes. But the argument is weak because of the first point. How many professional athletes would quit if they were taxed 60%? How many stock investors traders would? Or inventors?

This is actually a very good idea. However, not sure how conclusive the results would be. They could be highly reliable, just not sure.

Wouldn't this be extremely commonplace in academic (and also generally analytical) economics? It's hard to imagine that policy proposals aren't being put through simulations to get sample sizes unparalleled in the real world

David, USA has already tried extremely high marginal tax rates (like 70%+) and basically it led to a lot of unproductive investment in tax shelters and such. The same thing will happen again. if you look at federal government revenue as a percentage of GDP the revenue rises and falls with the economy post WWII. The late nineties stock market boom brought record revenues to the federal government. Good economic times with large taxable capital gains were the reason. There are arguments out there that marginal tax rates up to 75% won't mean anything. I'll just say the models these conclusions are based on are in my view very flawed. The record regarding federal revenue is clear, high economic growth translates to high federal government revenue. Low economic growth translates to lower government revenue (as a percentage of GDP).

What you are asking essentially is what are the most accurate economic models. I don't know but the track record I think would indicate that humans haven't mastered predicting the future that well. How do you prove that an economic model is accurate? I would tend to value Fed model and CBO model outputs tbh.

Hm? What I'm saying is I thought David's idea seems obvious and I'd be shocked if most models and policies aren't being simulated on computers to check for unintended consequences.

but Arthur Laffer doodling a curve on a napkin.. that's clear science

Did I state otherwise? I just have my doubts about how much we can rely on their outputs. Just saying that modeling the economy isn't cut and dried. You can run all the simulations you want but if a model is lacking in some way, then running simulations won't render them infallible. Are you actually claiming that infallible economic models are pretty much standard?

There are good reasons why economics is referred to as the dismal science. And please before anyone gets the idea that I'm down on economics as an academic discipline, I think economics is a fascinating topic.

Um, the empirical evidence pretty strongly suggests that they do, which you could have easily discovered for yourself if you had spent a moment or two looking into the 3 organizations linked.

However, I must give you credit for arguing that poor people are too stupid to use money. That is one scorching hot take.

Oh. No, I misinterpreted your post. In the first place I was just surprised at your 'actually a very good idea' since it seems like such a standard idea, and after that I thought you thought I was asking what specific model is best or something.

Definitely agree with you on how hard it is to model the economy and predict the consequences

Go on...

The point is that as people become richer and richer far beyond what they need it behooves them to take larger and larger chances that the money that they give the poor is not spent wisely. A trillionaire should give every poor person in his country 10K even if he knows 90% will blow it. The only exception would be if somehow the gift could be shown to do more harm than good.

The outputs could easily miss an unintended consequence. But if they found one its favored to be right. At least to the point that it should make you revisit the idea.

ok we can agree there doesn't exist at this time an absolute method of predicting such a complex economy.

why are you default advocating for the ultra rich? what's in it for you? the economy and government wouldn't collapse if we had a 90% top income tax bracket, there's recorded history that businesses in america thrived for decades under such a system. it wasn't that long ago.

are you like, on the verge of becoming a multibillionaire and don't want to blow your dreams up? or are you already earning millions of dollars a year and feel like it's still not enough?

I'm emotional? I'm not the one claiming a whole class of people is lazy and stupid, that seems much more emotional than logical to me.

Claiming "all" poors are lazy and stupid is, in fact, poor shaming and extremely lazy and stupid thinking, just what you would expect from ****wads.

To avoid muddying the waters I am talking only about money that would otherwise be selfishly spent rather than well spent.

Keep rationalizing your position.