I’m long retired and no longer a tax slave time wise. All the work I do for my fam and others is totally tax free. It’s very intellectually liberating.
Peeps are dumb if they only make their incremental decisions on the average. In the aggregate I suspect they don’t.
Go work for a large corp - most have zero clue on their taxes. They just know their witholding amount. Even at NQ deferred comp meetings (which are only employees that make at least 127k/yr), most are idiots about their taxes when questions come up. And at that level, a promotion usually means at least another 50k in income (or much higher), so even at 25-35% marginal, most will take the huge pay increase and work a cpl extra hrs a week