Submitted by Scott Baker, Aug 18, 2008 14:37

Am I missing something? Increasing the tax rate from 39.6% to 43.6% sounds like about a 10% increase to me, not a 24% increase as stated in the article. So, if a woman quits working (and by the way, maybe it'll be the man who quits working) when she and her spouse hit that magical top bracket, I'd wager there are other reasons at work there. It always amuses me that some conservatives think highly successful people making the top three percent of the income curve are sitting at home sweating out the minutuae of their tax returns; these people are the movers and shakers of our society. They almost certainly have accountants who can find a way to keep them under that bracket — for example, by contributing slightly more to tax deferred retirement accounts — and they are much more enthusiastic about working than they are worried about how much "The Man" will take from their paycheck.

The ultimate ludicrousness of this argument would come from the following thought experiment: imagine Bill Gates, just at the beginning of his career thinking, "Gee, I'd love to develop a brand new operating system for these new personal computers, but I'm worried if I become a billionaire, the government will collect a higher percentage of my wages than they do now that I'm only a college student. Is it worth it?" Of course, this is a ridiculous scenario on the face of it. Bill Gates and his ilk have a drive and passion that most of us can't even imagine — something like the Michael Phelps of the software world — and the last thing, literally the last thing they are thinking of when starting their new dynamic companies is whether they will advance to a higher tax bracket. As for New York's contribution to the overall tax rate of the rich, well, that's a state and city matter, isn't it? Now, if we could just get a president who will spend our money wisely instead of on pointless wars, cronyism, and corruption, then we might really be able to reduce the tax burden.

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