I suppose he would cut down on expenses? If a worker cannot live for two years on 90% of their salary, it’s probably not a job they should be taking given their lifestyle
If they’re living on 90% of their salary, and you take 10% away, now they’re living on 100% of their salary. Should they still be able to live on 90% of that? And 90% of that?
The point of living on 90% is that you still have the 10%.
So now the tax means you have to seek a job at 111% of what would have been enough. Best of luck with that.
The best teachers not only teach the material—they foster a deep love for what they teach, and may cause their pupil’s to take on careers related to what they teach.. This incentive scheme captures that distinction
The incentive that this produces for the students is to earn more money to stay in the same place, and for the teachers to teach whatever subjects will earn more money. Say goodbye to anything being taught that doesn’t translate into earning more money. It replaces teaching to the test by teaching to the bank balance.
I will simply point out that people and the economy seem to have adjusted perfectly well to income tax to respond to your first point.
I don’t think that it incentivizes people to stay in the same place. The only people who it incentivizes to stay in the same place are people who expect to get less than a 10% raise from a promotion or new job AND stay at their new job less than two years. And if companies wanted those people, they would make up the difference. To be fair, it does disincentivize career change… but only marginally more than career change is ALREADY disincentivized.
I think that teaching to the bank account is probably not the optimal strategy. but I do believe it provides orders of magnitude more social value than the current system. As someone who works with liberal arts graduates to help them find their jobs, I think it’s a travesty that liberal arts is as big as stem, even though the expected value and amount of jobs from a liberal arts degree is vastly smaller than STEM.
What I think you’re really getting at is externalities—there are some high paying jobs that are bad for society, and some low paying jobs that are good for society. But in my philosophical view,, that’s the role of the government—to tax away negative externalities of jobs, and subsidize positive externality jobs. This proposal would make that process way more effective, because those taxes and subsidies would be felt by the teachers
As someone who works with liberal arts graduates to help them find their jobs, I think it’s a travesty that liberal arts is as big as stem, even though the expected value and amount of jobs from a liberal arts degree is vastly smaller than STEM.
The typical defense of liberal arts education I read online is: “But liberal arts education has nonzero value, therefore we must preserve it exactly as it is now!” Usually done by describing a strawman world with zero liberal arts education, and showing that something of value is lost. For example, in such world people would keep doing science, but would completely lose their ability to verbally explain why doing science is a good thing.
Ironically, I think the success of this type of argument is itself another argument against too much purely liberal arts education.
EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I think there is a huge hypocrisy involved. People who are successful at math but fail at e.g. philosophy are describes as losers, a kind of pathetic half-humans. On the other hand, successful philosophers who fail at math… what, is there any problem as long as they can provide a clever philosophical argument why they are still high-status? (What exactly is the lesson here? Being high-status is better than being right or being useful, I guess, and clever arguments are still the best road to high status in the eyes of masses.)
If they’re living on 90% of their salary, and you take 10% away, now they’re living on 100% of their salary. Should they still be able to live on 90% of that? And 90% of that?
The point of living on 90% is that you still have the 10%.
So now the tax means you have to seek a job at 111% of what would have been enough. Best of luck with that.
The incentive that this produces for the students is to earn more money to stay in the same place, and for the teachers to teach whatever subjects will earn more money. Say goodbye to anything being taught that doesn’t translate into earning more money. It replaces teaching to the test by teaching to the bank balance.
I will simply point out that people and the economy seem to have adjusted perfectly well to income tax to respond to your first point.
I don’t think that it incentivizes people to stay in the same place. The only people who it incentivizes to stay in the same place are people who expect to get less than a 10% raise from a promotion or new job AND stay at their new job less than two years. And if companies wanted those people, they would make up the difference. To be fair, it does disincentivize career change… but only marginally more than career change is ALREADY disincentivized.
I think that teaching to the bank account is probably not the optimal strategy. but I do believe it provides orders of magnitude more social value than the current system. As someone who works with liberal arts graduates to help them find their jobs, I think it’s a travesty that liberal arts is as big as stem, even though the expected value and amount of jobs from a liberal arts degree is vastly smaller than STEM.
What I think you’re really getting at is externalities—there are some high paying jobs that are bad for society, and some low paying jobs that are good for society. But in my philosophical view,, that’s the role of the government—to tax away negative externalities of jobs, and subsidize positive externality jobs. This proposal would make that process way more effective, because those taxes and subsidies would be felt by the teachers
The typical defense of liberal arts education I read online is: “But liberal arts education has nonzero value, therefore we must preserve it exactly as it is now!” Usually done by describing a strawman world with zero liberal arts education, and showing that something of value is lost. For example, in such world people would keep doing science, but would completely lose their ability to verbally explain why doing science is a good thing.
Ironically, I think the success of this type of argument is itself another argument against too much purely liberal arts education.
EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I think there is a huge hypocrisy involved. People who are successful at math but fail at e.g. philosophy are describes as losers, a kind of pathetic half-humans. On the other hand, successful philosophers who fail at math… what, is there any problem as long as they can provide a clever philosophical argument why they are still high-status? (What exactly is the lesson here? Being high-status is better than being right or being useful, I guess, and clever arguments are still the best road to high status in the eyes of masses.)