Felix Salmon, at his new home over at Reuters, wonders what’s up with Steve Forbes’s decision to cut the pay of Forbes staffers making more than $100,000:
This is taxing the rich! It’s class warfare! Why should those employees earning a six-figure salary be singled out for pay cuts? If you cut their pay, don’t you know that you’re going to reduce their incentive to work hard, and also the incentive for lower-earning employees to aspire to their position? And these are the most productive members of the firm! You’re punishing success! You should be giving the higher-paid employees a pay rise, instead — that will surely boost corporate revenues!
I think this could mean that the Forbes/Kudlow/Stephen Moore theory of taxation (I’m not going to rope Arthur Laffer into this, because he’s a bit more nuanced about it) is truly headed for the dustbin of history. Or, more likely, the deep freeze—whence it will reemerge in 30-40 years.