You're asking how people would feel if they were forced into high-tax and low-tax test groups.. But suppose people are given a choice opt-in to a tax lottery system, such that instead of paying a fixed rate the taxpayer would have a random chance of paying either a higher or lower rate.
As initially reprehensible as this sounds to me, the government could make quite a bit of money by taking clues from the gaming industry. Gamification of the tax system?
If the experiment is opt-in, there will surely be a bias in the sample population. In this case, the strategy will select risk-seeking individuals, because risk-averse ones will not want to participate.
I guess that's true. But what I meant to say was that in order to arrange for the results to net a zero difference from what the government would collect normally, you're not really randomly assigning tax rates or running a lottery, you're just fixing people's rates at something other than what they would normally be.
Something about manipulating the conditions of the experiment (even a stupid thought experiment) to force a desired outcome doesn't sit right with me.
As initially reprehensible as this sounds to me, the government could make quite a bit of money by taking clues from the gaming industry. Gamification of the tax system?