AEI Values

My attention has just been brought to this paper by two "resident scholars" and a "research fellow" at the AEI propaganda mill, in which they argue against the proposed top marginal tax rates proposed by Diamond and Saez.

Hers's the meat of their argument:

"Imagine a high school student who graduates in a world where the top marginal income tax rate is more than 70 percent. He may decide not to pursue his dream of becoming a college-educated engineer because the government will take a large share of the returns to his college investment — that is, much of the extra money he will earn because he is a college-educated engineer will be seized by the government, so he may conclude that going to college isn’t worth it. He is worse off because of the high top income tax rate. And so is society, because we now have one less engineer. Or imagine a medical school student. She may decide to become a pediatrician instead of a heart surgeon because a large share of the extra money she would earn being a surgeon would be taken by the government. There is nothing wrong with pediatricians, but the problem is that the government is distorting this medical student’s decision — that is, she isn’t making the choice based on her preferences and market prices alone. If enough people made that choice, there wouldn’t be enough surgeons (an economist would say there is an inefficient allocation of human resources). Or imagine a small business owner. His business is growing and he has the opportunity to expand it over the next decade. But because expanding it will require a lot of work — not to mention that the payoff is risky — he chooses not to. He decides that it’s just not worth it given that the potential rewards from his hard work will largely go to the government."

Let's take a realistic look at their argument here.
" (A high school student) may decide not to pursue his dream of becoming a college-educated engineer because the government will take a large share ....of the extra money he will earn because he is a college-educated engineer.."
What would be his income tax rate as a high school graduate?  The NCES data show high school graduates earning a median annual income of $30,000, and if the tax rates I proposed in my post of February 22, 2013 were in place, his income tax (single person) would be $3,875, leaving an after tax income of $26,125
If he were to be an engineer, he could expect to be making $62.950 a year (taking the average of median entry level incomes for different engineering fields). My proposed tax rates (single person) would mean an annual income tax bill of $11,273, leaving an after tax income of $51,677 (i.e. more than the pretax income of a high school only graduate).
The difference in income after taxes: $25,552.
This difference in income would pay off a college debt of $100,000 in four years, leaving the engineer in a far better financial position than the high school graduate for the rest of their careers.
Similar calculations could be made for the other examples suggested by the AEI, but consider: these are financial calculations only.  They do not take into account the benefits of the realizations of dreams and continuing job satisfaction, which I suggest would outweigh the mundane financial considerations that the AEI "scholars" seem to think are so important.