TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Reihan Salam enters an ongoing debate about raising marginal tax rates between Kevin Drum and Megan McArdle:

I don’t think that small increases in MTRs are in themselves “a disaster,” and I’ve never suggested otherwise. Rather, I think that high MTRs create work disincentives that dampen labor supply and reduce the overall level of economic activity. If these revenue gains can be achieved through less costly measures, which is to say measures that create less in the way of deadweight loss, I’d much prefer that we pursue those measures. And I’d also argue that the public sector is sufficiently inefficient that I’d much rather see structural reform designed to increase public sector productivity than a bias towards raising revenue to pay for the existing public sector.