>If a tax is a function of the worker's income, it doesn't really matter (except for nominal terms) whether the worker or employer pays the taxes,

yes, I took a lot of micro (and macro too for that matter) but if what you say were true, neither political party nor activists would go on and on about taxing "corporations". You should direct your comments toward the parties that do that. But of course, you would get downvoted because the parties that do that don't want to hear otherwise. That's what I was doing, trying to explain ecomonics in ways they'd be receptive to, because telling people how things work is always a good thing even if they are not ready to go all the way.

also, in terms of pure micro, indirectly taxing things is never as efficient as directly taxing them, which you are not accounting for. The inefficiency tax in the form of "lower overall employment" is not easily measured even though we know it's quite significant and as impactful as "well this tax averages out the same" when it's not the same.