Trump hứa giảm thuế

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The debate over taxes reflects a classic, ongoing disagreement (tranh cãi, bất hòa) between the left and the right. In 1975, Arthur Okun, a Brookings economist and former adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, wrote a short book called Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff. Okun argued that by using taxes (thuế) and transfers of wealth (tái phân phối thu nhập/của cải) to equalize (làm cho công bằng) economic outcomes (thành quả kinh tế), the government distorts (làm méo mó, biến dạng) incentives (động cơ)—or that, to put it metaphorically (phép ẩn dụ), the harder the government tries to ensure that the economic pie is cut into slices of a similar size, the smaller the pie becomes. Based on this argument, the main priority of the Democratic Party is to equalize the slices, whereas the main priority of the Republican Party is to grow the pie.

Yet Moore and Laffer aren’t willing to admit that making policy requires confronting such difficult tradeoffs. Laffer is famous (nổi tiếng) for his eponymous (thuộc về người mà tên được lấy đặt cho một nơi (hoặc một tổ chức..)) curve (đường cong), which shows that tax rates can reach levels high enough that cutting them would yield enough growth to actually increase tax revenue. In that scenario, the tradeoff between equality and efficiency vanishes. The government can cut taxes, increase growth, and use the greater tax revenue to help the less fortunate. Everyone is better off.

The Laffer curve is undeniable as a matter of economic theory. There is certainly some level of taxation at which cutting tax rates would be win-win. But few economists believe that tax rates in the United States have reached such heights in recent years; to the contrary, they are likely below the revenue-maximizing level. In practice, the big tradeoff between equality and efficiency just won’t go away.

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