If a government spending more than it claims in taxes is what it means to be fiscally irresponsible, then either decreasing spending or increasing taxes will be more fiscally responsible. If the relative sizes of spending and taxes are not what makes a government fiscally responsible, then the whole basis of the analogy at the start of the blog post falls apart.

I lose that tax revenue forever–the present value of future taxes doesn’t change, so the total falls.

Anything you fail to tax is either saved or spent. If it’s saved, then it’s not lost because it’s still there to tax tomorrow. If it’s spent, then it’s not lost because people got something they valued for it—and the goal, here, of course, is to provide people with things they value.

In the same way, if you don’t get that $500 haircut, then the $500 either stays in the bank or is available to spend on, say, home repairs. Either way, pulling the $500 out of the bank to finance the haircut can’t make the haircut more responsible.

Although I may be confusing signs of the apocalypse with the means.

You said that a $500 haircut doesn’t become “responsible” just because you pay for it out of your bank account. No, but it’s slightly *more* responsible than paying for it with a credit card.

Yes, logically speaking, if you put a purchase on your credit card, you’ll have to pay for that purchase eventually, so you should weigh the costs and benefits the same as for a cash purchase. But we know that many people *do* make more irresponsible purchases with credit cards than with their checking accounts.

And that’s not even taking into account that buy-now-pay-later enables some people to get out of paying entirely, if they die before the later taxes are assessed, or if they earn all their income now and them stop earning and start living off their savings before the future tax hikes come. That’s like putting a $500 haircut on a credit card that *might* come due while you’re still working, but once you retire, has to be paid by someone else.

Of course you’re right that the important thing is to stop getting $500 haircuts in the first place.

The total tax that can be collected is the discounted value of the maximum possible tax rate (say the revenue maximizing rate) times the flow of economic activity in each period. If, for example, I set the current tax rate equal to zero today, I lose that tax revenue forever–the present value of future taxes doesn’t change, so the total falls.

I can’t prove this, but it seems to me just from casual observation that there are more gay men (at least in the United States) than lesbian women, so that’s a plus for straight men if true.