Legal Commentary

Two years ago, Greg Mankiw threatened to stop working if Obama was elected, basically on the theory that his tax rates would go up and his incentives would thereby go down.  It was one of those "Going Galt" threats that looks ridiculous in retrospect.  Mankiw, of course, is still a professor at Harvard.  But he has stopped working in one respect -- he's recycled that old blog post into an op-ed for the New York Times.  A few thoughts:

• First, if you're looking for reasons why the print media continues to lose importance and market share, compare this and this.  The New York Times essentially ran a two-year-old blog post in its Sunday edition.  I can't even really blame Mankiw for this -- where are the editors?  In fact, I think Mankiw's op-ed is an elaborate inside joke on his part.  "Two years ago, I threatened to stop working.  And I made good on that threat!  Of course, if people want to pay me for not working, I'm happy to accept it, even with higher taxes.  I just won't do any new work."
• I'm willing to offer the Times this two-year-old blog post, which was my response to Mankiw's original post.  I could summarize it here, but I'm not getting paid for it, so what's the point?  You can read DeLong, Ezra Klein, etc., etc.  Frankly, they take his argument far too seriously.  I still think Mankiw's blog should have the banner headline, "I'M BLOGGING AWAY MY CHILDREN'S INHERITANCE."
• The man still needs a course in basic taxation.  Can I recommend this one next spring, with Louis Kaplow?  You can learn about tax goodies.
• Todd Henderson got a ton of grief for a blog post that was far more open and personal about the effect of the tax cuts than Mankiw's op-ed.  I disagree with Todd's perspective, but at least he was being honest about his personal concerns.  Mankiw should get a lot more grief for this pseudo-threat to stop making the world a better place because he will lose some small percentage of any additional income he brings in.  Mankiw admits: "Paying an extra few percent in taxes wouldn?t create a lot of hardship."  And yet he claims that percentage will dictate whether he gives a guest lecture, takes on consulting work, or writes an article.  That, my friends, is someone with a strange set of utility curves.