向富人增稅 對經濟增長是利是弊大綱
Conservatives have argued for decades that tax cuts are the key to economic prosperity. And the tax plan presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is pushing would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners by an average of approximately $1.3 million per year, embracing that conservative point of view.
幾十年來，保守派堅持認爲經濟繁榮的關鍵在於減輕賦稅。如果按共和黨提名候選人Donald Trump提出的稅收計劃，僅佔0.1%的頂層收入人羣每人每年在稅費上的支出將減少約130萬美元，這一計劃與保守派的觀點不謀而合。
On the other hand, Democrats such as front-runner Hillary Clinton take another approach. Clinton says she'll reform the U.S. tax code so that the wealthiest pay their fair share. The response from Republicans has been predictable: They argue that such a tax plan will lower growth and harm the economy.
另一方面，民主黨內大熱的提名候選人Hillary Clinton則有不同的做法。Clinton稱她將對美國稅碼進行改革，讓那些頂層收入人羣承擔其公平份額。共和黨人對此的迴應不難預見：他們稱該稅收計劃將減緩增長並對經濟造成損害。
Do the conservative arguments against tax increases have any merit? Or are they, as Democrats claim, a way to serve an ideological goal of smaller government and reward wealthy Republican donors? Let's take a closer look.
保守派反對增稅的理由究竟有沒有可取之處？亦或者，像民主黨人所說的那樣，只是爲達成小政府的意識形態目標而服務，順帶回報一下富有的共和黨捐款人？現在讓我們對這些（理由）做更進一步的瞭解。
Increasing taxes on the wealthy will harm economic growth: This argument is made frequently, along with the claim that increasing growth will lift all boats, but the evidence doesn't support either claim. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond and John Bates Clark medalist Emmanuel Saez have noted, since the 1970s no clear correlation exists between economic growth and top tax-rate cuts across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
對富人增稅將損害經濟增長：這種說法我們經常能聽到，與此說法一起出現的還有經濟的持續增長將會讓所有人的財富都隨之水漲船高，然而現有證據都不支持以上兩種說法。諾貝爾經濟學獎得主Peter Diamond和約翰·貝茨·克拉克獎得主Emmanuel Saez曾指出，20世紀70年代以來，在經濟合作與發展組織（OECD）各成員國內，經濟增長與最高稅率削減之間並無明顯關聯。
As for the trickle-down argument, this claim falls apart when you examine what happened to the distribution of income after tax cuts for the wealthy enacted during the Bush administration. Income of those at the top went up substantially, with no corresponding gain for those lower in the income distribution.
至於“涓滴效應”的理論，當你回頭審視Bush政府所推行的減稅政策對收入分配的影響之後，會發現這一主張根本站不住腳。頂層人士的收入大幅增加，與此同時低收入人羣的收入水平卻並未出現相應的增長。
If the wealthy aren't willing to move between states in response to tax differences, it seems even more unlikely that would undertake the far more difficult task of moving to another country.
既然富人們不願意因稅收差異而移居其他州，那麼他們也更不會選擇承擔更多風險而移居國外了。
Increasing taxes on the wealthy won't increase tax revenue: The Laffer curve argument that increasing taxes will cause the wealthy to pursue tax-avoidance strategies or forego profitable opportunities to the extent that tax revenues actually fall has been examined again and again, and the message is clear. Tax avoidance may increase somewhat, but nowhere near enough to cause tax revenues to fall.
對富人增稅不能增加稅收收入：拉弗曲線理論問世至今已經歷過一次又一次地檢驗，所傳遞出的信息十分明確，即富人會通過尋求避稅策略或是放棄獲利機會的方式來應對增稅，這樣一來，實際稅收收入將會下降。避稅行爲會有所增加，但不足以導致稅收收入下降。
Diamond and Saez have looked at this closely, and they found that the revenue-maximizing top federal marginal income tax rate would be in or near the range of 50 percent to 70 percent (taking into account that individuals face additional taxes from Medicare and state and local taxes).
Diamond和Saez曾對此進行過詳細研究，發現當聯邦邊際所得稅率最高值處在或接近50%至70%這一範圍內時，才能實現收入的最大化（考慮到個人還會遇到一些額外稅種，如醫療險、州稅、地方稅）。
Less will be donated to private charities: Would tax increases cause the wealthy to reduce their charitable giving? Research on this question suggests it's the other way around. Back in the 1970s, when the top rate of federal income tax was 70 percent, wealthier Americans (those with incomes of over $500,000 in 2007 dollars) gave around twice as much of their money to charity than they did in 2007, when the top rate had fallen to 35 percent.
私人慈善機構的受捐贈數額將會減少：增稅是否會導致富人慈善捐款數額的減少？關於此問題的研究所得出的結論恰好與此相反。在20世紀70年代，當時的聯邦所得稅的最高稅率達到了70%，富人們（按2007年美元幣值來算他們的收入超過了50萬美元）的慈善捐款數額是其2007年捐款額的兩倍，而2007年時最高稅率已經降至35%。
Why does this happen? When taxes are higher, the benefit of the tax deduction for charitable giving is also higher, so people tend to increase the amount they give. In addition, the wealthy give their biggest donations almost exclusively to universities and colleges, hospitals and medical centers, and arts institutions. They rarely make large gifts to social-service groups,grass-roots organizations or noNPRofit groups that focus on the poor or minorities.
爲何會出現這種情況？當稅收增高時，相應的慈善捐贈所帶來的稅收減免優惠也更大，因此人們樂於增加捐款數額。此外，富人們的大部分捐贈基本都流向了高等院校、醫療機構、文藝機構。他們很少會將大筆款項捐贈給關注低收入和少數族裔羣體的社會服務組織、基層組織或者非營利組織。
So to the extent that the increased tax revenue is used to support these groups, social welfare could benefit.
因此，在一定程度上，增加稅收收入可以更好地扶持這些組織，社會福利將從中受益。
The wealthy deserve what they earn: This argument assumes that they're paid according to their contribution to society. But in a world of monopoly power, regulatory capture and a symmetric power relationships in bargaining over the wage and profit shares of business earnings, the presumption that those at the top of the income distribution earned their income flies out the window.
富人掙來的錢都是他們應得的：這一理論假設富人們是因其對社會的貢獻而獲得的報酬。但現實卻是，在商業收入的報酬和利潤分成拉鋸戰中，充斥着壟斷勢力、規制俘獲和不對稱的權利關係，因而頂層收入人羣獲得的是其應得的報酬這個假設不成立。
If we assume that fairness is defined as keeping what you contribute to the social good (what economists would call the value of their marginal product), and no more than that, such fairness would compel us to take the income the wealthy earn in excess of their contribution to the social good.
如果我們假設，公平的定義是保持對社會的貢獻（經濟學家稱之爲“邊際產品價值”），除此外沒有其他因素，這樣的公平將促使我們向富人要回超出他們對社會貢獻的那部份收入。
Arguments about the size of government and the taxes needed to support the many things that government does are certainly fair game for politicians. But the argument that tax increases on the wealthy will cause substantial harm to the economy does not withstand a close look at the evidence.
關於政府規模和運作政府所需要的稅收收入之類的爭論顯然是政客們之間的公平博弈。而向富人增稅會嚴重損害經濟的這一理論，在我們對這些證據進行仔細分析後，顯然是不成立的。
