From Professor Phelps

The latest winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Edmund Phelps, was quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal, "I have the eccentric view that there's too mich wealth sloshing around the American economy. This wealth has had bad incentive effects on the supply of labor, employee performance and maybe even innovation. We have become wealthy thanks in part to unsustainably low tax rates. From that point of view, it would be a good thing for the federal government to raise taxes and run big surpluses until we have retired the public debt. In the short run the higher tax rates might be unpleasant. But in the long run, with the debt reduced or eliminated, incentives to work or to advance in the world would be enhanced, because after-tax pay rates as a proprtion of wealth would be higher."