Daniel Hamermesh's Economic Thought of the Day: December 5, 2007—
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/EconThought.htm
"Gonzalo Otalora, the Argentine author of the book Ugly, has proposed that Argentina put a tax on beauty. Each person judged beautiful would have to pay. Can we agree on who would be taxed? Would people who are judged beautiful try to change their looks in order to avoid the tax? A few would, but not if the tax is less than the gains they believe they obtain (both monetary and non-monetary) from being beautiful; but a lot of evidence suggests that people agree on what is good-looking, and that, like intelligence, beauty cannot be greatly altered. In that sense the excess burden of the tax is likely to be small. This seems like a pretty good tax to me".
7 comments:
The question arises: if monetary gains arise from beauty, then why not simply tax income?
Beauty is in the eye of the taxman, it's just not right is it!
A fat tax has also been proposed due to the associated strain so called lifestyle choices are putting on the health care system. If both were brought in this would leave a fairly narrow bracket of people who are not being taxed on their appearance!
martin, the reason you tax beauty is that it cannot be altered so there is no dead-weight loss. if you tax income, you disincentivise effort.
having said that, there is a strong example here of the feeling of "not-quite-rightness" of some econoomic logic. one of the main reasons you wouldnt tax beauty is the feeling that the tax is arbitrary and also that beauty is difficult to define as Hamermesh has partly dealt with.
With a tax on beauty you also incentivise participation in 'The Swan' meaning boom time for plastic surgeons!
Taxing tall people would make more sense based on the logic of the argument here.
I'm just wondering is gene taxation a feasible idea for the future. An example would be the ApoE4 polymorphism which is associated with the development of Alzheimers. Like the idea of taxing smokers or the overweight due to the potential future health costs, you may be punished for the potential detrimental effects of your genetic inheritance!
Michael,
You'll be a better economist than anyone on the UCD PhD register!
In the health insurance market the lower cost of genetic mapping might lead to a tax on genes by any other name.
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