experimental determination of the peak point of the Laffer curve

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They don't care about what right-wing nitwits consider to be "facts", which reliably turn out to be anecdotes that stuck in the nitwit's memory.

The Fabians conducted their quiet revolution by accumulating statistics and using them to establish reliable facts, but right wingers don't believe anything that doesn't fit their world view, no matter how good the statistics are, and will believe any rubbish - no matter how ill-established (and the Laffer Curve is a prime example) if it gives them the answer they want to hear.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

"Going John Gault"

It's nothing new. In the '40s Reagan would only do two movies a year because the government got the rest. Why work harder? Of course you've heard The Beatles "Tax Man".

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I don't think that Japanese demographics reflect tax rates, but rather property prices - it's expensive to buy a big enough flat to accommodate any kind of family, and many couples put off child-raising until they can afford a place where they can get out of ear-shot of a howling infant.

Most people can't do that kind of work themselves, which rather limits that contribution to the Laffer Curve, which is in any case more of a pretty idea than an observation of any practical significance.

About the only practical examples of a Laffer-Curve sort of effect in action were the 95% tax rates on the top slice of high incomes in the UK and Sweden after WW2 - even the US had a 91% rate - and that didn't limit the tax take by stopping people earning money, it just made tax avoidance a very well rewarded activity, so hardly anybody paid the top rate.

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But Reagan was always bone-idle.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Actually you get a pretty fast reaction. A load of golden balls guys left London for tax havens a few years back, got bored out of their skulls and are now quietly coming back with tail between legs.

Is a banking insiders take on this latest spat.

Japanese taxes are higher than in the USA but also lower than most of Europe. They also have universal healthcare and long life expectancy to match despite a rather high proportion of smokers.

It isn't the tax situation but the incredibly high value of land that skews things in Japan. When I was there in the early 90's our local noodle shop in central Tokyo was valued at $500k/m^2 and the grounds of the Imperial Palace were worth more than the entire of California!

Well, bankers have to live where the money is. I wonder how much of their assets they left in Aruba or whatever.

There is a step function of income at many places on the California-Nevada border.

But London is a great (and expensive) place to live, as is San Francisco, and there are still optimizations available in both.

We have some rich friends who moved to Las Vegas for tax reasons. Yikes. Money isn't everything.

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Of course people who don't work believe in income redistribution.

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Don't be silly. My opinions on progressive taxation haven't changed significantly since I was old enough to have an opinion that was recognisably mine, and for most of that period I was paying out something between a quarter and third of my income in tax.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen