President Obama's health care reform certainly offers progressive benefits as it extends access to health insurance. An economist might ask what it will cost. In today's WSJ, Casey Mulligan has written a
pessimistic piece arguing that its costs will be very high. He argues that marginal tax rates will be rising due to this legislation and this will have medium term effects on slowing economic growth. Here is a graph from his paper. Do incentives matter? We may soon have a sharp test. Here is a quote from Casey and his graph.
"Regardless of whether redistribution is achieved by collecting more taxes from families with high incomes, levying employment taxes on businesses, providing more subsidies to families with low incomes, or all of the above, an essential consequence is the same: a reduction in the reward for working."
