Deadweight Loss and Marginal Excess Tax Burden

It's not all that common to find policy-oriented readings about welfare measures, but here is one we would like for you all to read and consider. Professor Mansk argues that very common economic terms like "inefficiency," "deadweight loss," and "distortion" are actually pejorative terms used in anti-tax rhetoric. These are the exact terms that we defined in this week's lecture and are found in Chapter 3 of your textbook. Dr. Manski argues that economists should discard these terms when conducting analyses of taxation and public spending. Do you agree?
Some issues to consider, but please feel free to use any of these points to help guide your comments or feel free to raise your own points related to this article. Just make sure that your comments reflect your economic knowledge and are related what we are studying in this class:
1. Do the concepts of deadweight loss and marginal excess tax burden make sense to you? Do you agree or disagree with Dr. Manskithat the concept of inefficiency and deadweight loss are inappropriate for discussions regarding taxation and public spending?
2. Do you think that Dr. Manski's comment that "research on deadweight loss appear predestined to make income taxation look bad ... It focuses attention entirely on the social cost of financing government spending, with no regard to the social benefits" is fair? Ifdeadweight loss is a legitimate measure of the social cost of government spending, should it always be paired with the social benefits? An alternative view to Dr. Manski's position might be to argue that there is no necessary link between revenue generation through taxation, which creates a social cost, and the decision as to what the governments spends the money on, which creates a social benefit. We often don't know what the tax money will be spent on, and thus we can only discuss the social cost of taxation.
3. Dr. Manski suggests that we should specify a social welfare function and measure the welfare change of alternative taxation and spending policies. Do you agree with this approach?
4. Dr Manski argues that "increasing the tax rate is socially beneficial if and only if the additional infrastructure spending enabled by the tax rise yields a more than commensurate increase in wages. The optimal public spending level maximizes aggregate net (after tax) income." Do you agree? Can this approach be applied to all government functions Dr. Manski mentions?
Your response should be substantial, but not a long essay.
Link to Texbook: http://students(dot)aiu(dot)edu/submissions/profiles/resources/onlineBook/E5V5H3_Cost-benefit%20analysis%20_%202018.pdf
FUNDAMENTALS OF CBA
CHAPTER 3 Microeconomic Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis
Demand Curves
Supply Curves
Social Surplus and Allocative Efficiency
Government Surplus and Allocative Efficiency
Measuring Changes in Welfare