alt Hacker News> It's entirely possible that some kind of "coarse" price discrimination is OK/good but "fine-grained" price discrimination is bad. But where's the argument?
This seems entirely reasonable - they're obviously a point where tax rates are too low and revenue isn't being brought in, but also a point where tax rates are too high, incentivizing tax shelters or outright crime, and revenue starts decreasing again. The price discrimination side is the same thing just on "optional" purchases instead of taxes so it makes sense there is some Laffer curve corollary.
It's not necessarily obvious that tax rates can be too low. If you're a government and you issue the currency, you can get much of the same outcome as taxation by printing the money you need to spend. What you don't get by doing that is natural redistribution the way graduated marginal rates give you. You have to spend to redistribute.