Subsidizing Smart People
by rrusczyk, Apr 29, 2009, 11:34 PM
This reminds me of a friend of mine who defended crazy weapons systems and NASA boondoggles as a transfer of wealth from dumb people to smart people, which he argued was the opposite of most government transfers. I guess the effect Goolsbee refers to in his paper (the inelasticity of highly educated scientific labor supply) suggests that the government subsidy of research is in a sense reducing the taxes of scientific researchers by throwing extra money their way. Since these people get paid pretty well by national standards, I guess that doing this at the same time as hiking taxes on the rich is a way of picking one class of rich to be more deserving of keeping their money than other classes of rich. I wouldn't want to get into that sort of picking game myself -- I don't think that's government's place. But if there were a group of people I were going to favorably un-tax, geeks would be on the list!! Now if only they would extend that geek trainers!
February 2012
January 2012