To be efficient, we should avoid taxing hard work because we want people to do more of it and grow our economy. So that means taxing the things that people get just because of luck.

Some ideas of efficient tax policy suggest that we should avoid taxing people for things we want them to do more of (hard work, long hours, productivity) because these things are good for the economy and we want people to do even more of it.  So things that are just luck, and therefore people can’t do less of it to avoid taxes, should be taxed instead.  

A recent paper found that tall people make more than short people, even when other factors are controlled.  Since your height is something that you can’t control, we should really be scaling taxes based on height. The paper found that a tall person making $50,000 should be paying $4,500 more in taxes because that is the gain they get because of their height rather than their actual effort.  It’s more fair (also called utilitarian tax policy) to tax people for things that they get just based on luck (like height).  I bet you could do similar analysis for blonde hair, attractiveness, etc. 

What do you think?