The Generational Optimum Economy: Extracting Monopoly Gains from Posterity Through Taxation of Capital
证明，在不允许代际转移的经济中，对资本征税虽造成扭曲，但能使当代人受益，代价是牺牲后代利益，相当于当代人对未出生者行使垄断权力。
It is well known that an income tax, indeed any tax that falls on capital, often produces a distortion by reducing the effective interest rate below capital's marginal product. This distortion is usually deemed undesirable. This paper demonstrates, however, that such a tax, in an economy constrained to make no intergenerational transfers, can in spite of distortion redound to the benefit of those on whom it is levied. The tax of optimal magnitude is shown to yield a gain which is extracted at the expense of posterity, and which constitutes the exercise of monopoly power by living generations over those yet unborn. Finally it is demonstrated that an economy characterized by such exercise of monopoly power by each generation ad infinitum may produce a utility stream dominating that of an otherwise identical laissez-faire economy. The paper assumes, unrealistically, that generations are aware of this potential gain and that the .political process is sufficiently responsive to translate the electorate's desires into taxes of the optimal size. Each generation is assumed represented by its own government during its years of positive capital accumulation. Factor pricing is as