Originally posted by doodab
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Apart from being a complete straw man...
Those figures don't show productivity, but growth in productivity.
It's only highest earners, and excludes corporation taxes.
And the definition of productivity used is production per hour worked, which is not the kind of productivity were talking about.
Productivity under harsher tax regimes are less meaningful - if I tax your productivity in order to create more 'productivity' which involves pissing the cash up the wall, then were actually seeing less real productivity than if I didn't tax you at all.
it doesn't say how 'productivity' is measured.
The link is pretty meaningless in in isolation, even ignoring the other points. If anything it looks to me as though the numbers show the exact opposite of what is claimed- there's a higher growth shortly after ww2 now that people are making stuff rather than killing each other, but with really high taxation growth falls during a period where technology should cause productivity grow more rapidly. Than as tax rates hit their lowest point there is a time lag before growth picks up accordingly, just like there was a time lag on the way down.
Except of course it's just income tax. CT is probably more interesting because if lower tax results in capital investment (in machinery for example) then productivity (especially per hour) would likely see a rise given a short delay.
Lower nmw though - GDP might fall but productivity will increase. GDP is a meaningless measure anyway.
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