Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Fine. I Concede (re: Income Taxes)

Okay, alright, I know when I'm licked.  I thought I had a harmless but at least mildly interesting observation about people not knowing what income taxes -- sorry, commenter Andrew, make that Income Taxes -- and quite a few regular, excellent commenters let me know that I was wrong...not to mention that I can't even hold the Jonathan club, as I wind up on the wrong end of a J. Chait post.  Since I don't disagree with any of the things that any of these smart folks say, it's pretty clear that whatever point I originally might have had was useless at best and quite possibly foolish, and I hereby give up.  I'll stick an update on the original post, and I'm done with this one.

3 comments:

  1. But people really do not know what they pay in taxes, so your point is still at least partly right. I remember arguing 10 years ago with a colleague who was leaning toward voting for Bush because of that awful Clinton tax hike and how oppressive it was to her. She was making probably $45,000 a year at the time, was clearly talking about income taxes, had obviously not been subject to an increase in those taxes under Clinton, and was basing her assessment of *her own tax liability* not on her actual tax returns but on right-wing talking points she was hearing on cable TV. I doubt she was alone in any of that; in fact, it seems to me I've seen polling just this year that suggests that the Tea Partiers and others believe that Obama has raised their taxes when, in fact, he's lowered them.

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  2. I think people have a visceral reaction to the mere word "taxes" and therefore any survey about such a thing is bound to yield a rather useless, skewed, emotionally-driven, lizard-brain response.

    And while we're on the topic I am sick to death of surveys. Is there no topic that goes unexamined by a survey panel anymore? Surveys are the definition of useless.

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  3. I really enjoyed your comment, so thank you. it wasn't useless. Even (if)(though) all the responses are correct.

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