A lot of people see the US as a unstable risk and those with desired skillsets can easily leave with a work visa. Will we see a tangible migration of human capital abroad?
Is it a problem? Is it holding your post country back? Do you know any hcn who you work with who are considering leaving the country for a better future? What are your opinions?
I've been researching more into Marx's labor theory of value, and specifically why human labor is the only producer of surplus value. The argument goes back and forth for awhile, but skipping to the end: it's argued that machines can only ever be constant capital, while human labor can change and improve over time making variable capital.
Doesn't this imply a static notion of machines and AI? Or that creativity is only possible for humans? Present AI is very limited, and can only produce what its been trained on. However, the theoretical concept of Artificial General Intelligence would enable AI to adapt to any task and enable it to transfer knowledge from one domain to another in ways we might define as "creative".
Unless we believe that AGI is impossible for now and into perpetuity, wouldn't this contradict the idea that only humans can produce variable capital?
My ECN professor said there are (many?) studies about the US having a top marginal tax rate of 92% under President Eisenhower, and these studies found the people who fell in this income tax bracket (which weren't many) were hardly incentivized to stop earning income or working; there was virtually no disincentive to be less productive.
My question is: why wouldn't people who fall into high tax brackets try to exploit tax arbitrage or entirely export their capital overseas?
Furthermore, if there is no strong incentive for capital flight (and since empirical evidence says it has little to no effect on productivity), then would high tax rates (on the wealthiest agents) be beneficial (given our large budget deficits and amounts of income/wealth inequality)?
