Noah Smith, Columnist

Do Higher Taxes Make Us Work Less?

Higher income taxes may not make us want to work less.

December 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Can you spot the incentive to work here?
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

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In 2010, Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw wrote a column in the New York Times warning that if taxes go up, he and people like him will work less:

Now, Mankiw’s numbers include a little bit of dodgy math, because if there were no taxes, his pretax wage rate would be lower. But the basic point -- that taxes reduce the incentive to work -- is true.