In many ways, that’s an odd framing of the question(s) at hand: governments don’t just blindly try to maximise their tax revenue/the state’s productive capacity (although maybe they should do more of that?), and to some extent there are good reasons why they don’t (the very many citizens who are never going to make it into the top 1% — because that’s what one percent means — certainly prefer it if the tradeoff is a little more in their favour, and for mostly good reasons), etc. Yours is a political opinion I agree with — it means that governments should help people I like, and fund stuff I find cool and important to have! — but if someone comes up and say to you that they care much more about other things than being maximally productive as a country, I don’t see arguments to reply to that in your post. In that respect, the way you framed that as “productive people give the government more revenue” rather than something like “productive people build cool stuff everyone gets to enjoy” is interesting, but also makes it easier for someone to say that they just care about other things. All that means that, to me, this post sounds a lot more like a political opinion than the average LW post.
I wholeheartedly agree with the general idea, though: especially in my corner of Europe, people don’t seem to be very encouraged to try things and maximise the amount of interesting/important things they do, at least not as much as in the Bay Area, and I’d love to live in a world where people improve themselves more and do cool stuff more.
I think the core idea I’m trying to get across—and the reason I hoped this was a good fit for LW—is not about how govs can maximize revenue for its own sake, but that as a society we could do a much better job caring for the 99% by acknowledging the power laws behind wealth creation and focusing more on increasing our yield at the top.
This is true even if your goal as a government is NOT to maximize productive capacity, because cost / revenue is the bottleneck preventing you from funding everything else. Shifting policy to take advantage of this could let us better support all the “non-productive” things we care about: higher safety nets, public arts, etc.
So for example—if your goal as a country is to raise the standard of living via benefits to the bottom 50% of earners, unintuitively, the best to fund this is to help more high-potential folks become high-earners. Moving a single person from the 5% to the 1% generates enough revenue to pay for many dozens of basic incomes in the bottom quartile.
Thanks again for the thoughtful read and the feedback!
Yeah, I know that, that it’s just that you decided to approach the problem from that angle. And, on the one hand, it was more interesting that way, but on the other hand I was a bit surprised, basically, by what that framing ended up bringing forward vs leaving in the background — re-reading my comment, I still agree with the facts of what I said, but my tone was a bit harsher than I’d wanted.
In fact it’s very interesting: I’m still not surprised that governments don’t do it the way you suggest they should, because people in the bottom 99% want to be treated as well as people in the 1%, or because they prefer to be helped rather than left behind and then given money, etc., but I agree that it would in principle work better the way you describe, and that we often neglect that!
In many ways, that’s an odd framing of the question(s) at hand: governments don’t just blindly try to maximise their tax revenue/the state’s productive capacity (although maybe they should do more of that?), and to some extent there are good reasons why they don’t (the very many citizens who are never going to make it into the top 1% — because that’s what one percent means — certainly prefer it if the tradeoff is a little more in their favour, and for mostly good reasons), etc.
Yours is a political opinion I agree with — it means that governments should help people I like, and fund stuff I find cool and important to have! — but if someone comes up and say to you that they care much more about other things than being maximally productive as a country, I don’t see arguments to reply to that in your post.
In that respect, the way you framed that as “productive people give the government more revenue” rather than something like “productive people build cool stuff everyone gets to enjoy” is interesting, but also makes it easier for someone to say that they just care about other things. All that means that, to me, this post sounds a lot more like a political opinion than the average LW post.
I wholeheartedly agree with the general idea, though: especially in my corner of Europe, people don’t seem to be very encouraged to try things and maximise the amount of interesting/important things they do, at least not as much as in the Bay Area, and I’d love to live in a world where people improve themselves more and do cool stuff more.
Hey @TeaTieAndHat, thank you for the comment!
I think the core idea I’m trying to get across—and the reason I hoped this was a good fit for LW—is not about how govs can maximize revenue for its own sake, but that as a society we could do a much better job caring for the 99% by acknowledging the power laws behind wealth creation and focusing more on increasing our yield at the top.
This is true even if your goal as a government is NOT to maximize productive capacity, because cost / revenue is the bottleneck preventing you from funding everything else. Shifting policy to take advantage of this could let us better support all the “non-productive” things we care about: higher safety nets, public arts, etc.
So for example—if your goal as a country is to raise the standard of living via benefits to the bottom 50% of earners, unintuitively, the best to fund this is to help more high-potential folks become high-earners. Moving a single person from the 5% to the 1% generates enough revenue to pay for many dozens of basic incomes in the bottom quartile.
Thanks again for the thoughtful read and the feedback!
Yeah, I know that, that it’s just that you decided to approach the problem from that angle. And, on the one hand, it was more interesting that way, but on the other hand I was a bit surprised, basically, by what that framing ended up bringing forward vs leaving in the background — re-reading my comment, I still agree with the facts of what I said, but my tone was a bit harsher than I’d wanted.
In fact it’s very interesting: I’m still not surprised that governments don’t do it the way you suggest they should, because people in the bottom 99% want to be treated as well as people in the 1%, or because they prefer to be helped rather than left behind and then given money, etc., but I agree that it would in principle work better the way you describe, and that we often neglect that!