Mate, I've said your argument is sound. That doesn't mean that one has to accept its utilitarian framework. All peer-reviewed work can do is to establish that in a utilitarian economy, moderately progressive tax rates are beneficial. I don't even deny that. But I'm not bound to accept your ethical philosophy, and frankly a lot of western countries are not particularly progressive, so it seems a lot of others are in the same boat.
Again, your definition of "fairness" seems to be a utilitarian one, or maybe a Kantian one. That's fine. I don't accept that as my definition of fairness. I've used the sporting analogy in my previous post to highlight where we offer.
This part is absolutely fair and I can't contradict anything here.
It's disappointing that I can reply so neutrally to your views, which differ from mine, yet you call a whole field of economics "not serious economic research", as if anything that differs from your basic premises can't possibly be "serious". It must be "hocus-pocus" and "self-serving". It's only hocus-pocus if you start and end with the notion that utilitarianism is the only valid value system.
This I would contest.
Look at Arthur Laffer's wiki page. Note that he published slew of peer-reviewed research at the beginning of his career. Laffer Curve itself was a very notable economic concept, and very relevant when tax rates was upward of 70%.
It is reasonable to suggest that at certain tax rates, total receipt would go down!!
Note however, that there is almost no peer-reviewed economics research paper since 1992. Since then, he has published nothing that went through the scrutiny of serious peer-review. He was one of the primary advisers behind the Kansas debacle with their extreme tax cuts. And yet, his opinion - which is published widely by a certain political party, just no longer in peer reviewed research journals - is stridently absolutist. Taxation is evil! Always! At all levels!
Publication of the Laffer Curve was proper economics. The current "taxation is evil" is not. It is political demagogy. Unfortunately, this is what goes on in the name of "supply side economics" now-a-days!!
When I call supply side "economics" a "hocus pocus" - I refer to the current political activities by Arthur Laffer, and think tanks ideologically aligned with him, like Cato or Heritage etc. They are doing politics, not economics, and masquerading it as Economics.
This is an unfortunate state of affairs!! Proper research from all point of view adds a lot of value. Researchers following "Supply Side" doctrine honestly reviewing what Arthur Laffer did wrong in Kansas, as well as reviewing what went wrong in Connecticut where tax rate increase on the wealthy decreased tax receipt from them (thereby supporting Laffer Curve) would definitely add value, if anybody was doing it.
Unfortunately, nobody is doing it!!
By calling current - political - activities of supply side advocates "hocus pocus" and "not serious economics" I did not mean to question the legitimate work done in this field during the 70s and 80s. Neither was it meant to attack your point of view.