tax models

[Fred Foldvary]

On Tue, 30 May 2000, michael gilson de lemos wrote:

> taxes must be viewed as losses, always losses.

Taxes are losses, and benefits received from government are gains.
The issue then is the net effect and the comparison of alternatives.
 
> Be that as it may, it would seem that until there is a model of tax and
> loss behavior, saying this tax is better or worse is very imprecise. 

There is a model of excess burden, the social cost or burden to the entire
economy beyond the transer of wealth, and various types of taxes have
different excess burdens, depending also on supply and demand
elasticities.  

Fred Foldvary