In progressive tax regimes it’s rather hard for people to literally be taxed into starvation, but that doesn’t mean that no deaths occur on the margins. Consider for example the case where a person needs expensive medical treatment that’s not covered by insurance, they (or their family) can’t afford it, but it’s close enough to their means that they would have been able to if it wasn’t for their taxes. Or consider a semi-skilled laborer that’s making enough money that their taxes are nontrivial, but not enough to support their family on base pay once taxes are factored in. In order to make ends meet they take a more dangerous position to collect hazard pay, and a year later they die in an industrial accident.
And so forth. Looking at the margins often means looking at unusual cases, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any cases where the extra money would have made a difference. That’s not to say that dropping those taxes (and thus the stuff they fund) would necessarily be a utilitarian good, of course—only that there’s stuff we can put in the minus column, even if we’re just looking at deaths.
Ah, the hazardous profession case is one that I definitely hadn’t thought of. It’s possible that Jiro’s assertion is true for cases like that, but it’s also difficult to reason about, given that the hypothetical world in which said worker was not taxed may have a very different kind of economy as a result of this same change.
In progressive tax regimes it’s rather hard for people to literally be taxed into starvation, but that doesn’t mean that no deaths occur on the margins. Consider for example the case where a person needs expensive medical treatment that’s not covered by insurance, they (or their family) can’t afford it, but it’s close enough to their means that they would have been able to if it wasn’t for their taxes. Or consider a semi-skilled laborer that’s making enough money that their taxes are nontrivial, but not enough to support their family on base pay once taxes are factored in. In order to make ends meet they take a more dangerous position to collect hazard pay, and a year later they die in an industrial accident.
And so forth. Looking at the margins often means looking at unusual cases, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any cases where the extra money would have made a difference. That’s not to say that dropping those taxes (and thus the stuff they fund) would necessarily be a utilitarian good, of course—only that there’s stuff we can put in the minus column, even if we’re just looking at deaths.
Ah, the hazardous profession case is one that I definitely hadn’t thought of. It’s possible that Jiro’s assertion is true for cases like that, but it’s also difficult to reason about, given that the hypothetical world in which said worker was not taxed may have a very different kind of economy as a result of this same change.