Let's find progressive ways to tax the winners in our trickle-up economy

Blaming Britain's lack of growth on the taxation of high earners is nonsense – and totally out of step with the rest of the world

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 September 2011 22.00 BST

I know very few rich people who got rich to make money. They got rich because, other than spivs and gamblers, they enjoyed their work and were good at it. How much they made might be due to competition, greed, love, prestige, personal rivalry or, as JK Galbraith said of senior executives, a "warm personal gesture by an individual to himself". But there is no evidence that output rises or falls in response to shifts in post-tax income, except for some hourly-paid workers. It therefore does not respond to changes in marginal income tax.

While a few obsessives may so hate paying taxes that they would rather live out their lives in an airport lounge, the differential impact on economic growth of this year's rise from 40p to 50p on incomes over £150,000 must be negligible. So why all this week's talk of abandoning the 50p rate?