Shots Across The Bow

SKB Hits the Big Time!

SKBubba is now blogging the Republican National Convention for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Of course, he's not actually AT the convention, but what does that matter; you don't actually have to be there when you're just going to make up stuff anyway

And when he isn't emulating Jayson Blair, he channels Michael Moore, specializing in vague innuendo and deceptive half truth.

I'd like them to explain why, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the middle class's share of federal taxes has increased while wealthy pay less.

Note very carefully the construction of Bubba's sentence. It sounds like he said that the middle class is paying more and the wealthy less, but he isn't. That would be an easy target. He's a bit more subtle than that; he's compared the middle class share of the tax burden with the actaul amount the wealthy pay, and while it creates the impression noted above, these are actually two very different things. As usual, Bubba only tells you the part of the story that he wants you to see. Yes, the share of the tax burden the middle class pays did increase, but there's a lot more to the story, like the fact that not only are the wealthy paying less, but so is the middle class, and the lower classes as well. First, unlike Bubba, I'll provide a link to the Washington Post article where this information first came out so you can check the facts for yourself. If I'm spinning, you can call me on it.

First, check out this paragraph:

They point to a different set of numbers within the CBO study that show that the rich are actually paying more in individual federal income taxes. If Social Security, Medicare and other federal levies are excluded, the rich are paying a higher share of income taxes this year than they would have paid with no tax changes, the CBO found. If none of the tax cuts had passed, the top 20 percent would pay 78.4 percent of income taxes this year. Instead, they will pay 82.1 percent. In contrast, the middle-class share of income taxes dropped to 5.4 percent, from 6.4 percent if no tax cuts had passed.

What's this? The rich are actually paying a larger share of the income tax? But how can this be? Bubba said they're paying less! And he wouldn't lie, would he?

No, but he will send you on a snipe hunt if he can manage it. Remember when I said taxes paid and tax share were two different things? You've just seen it demonstrated. Everybody is paying less in taxes under the new tax laws. But the high income tax payers are accounting for a higher portion of total income tax receipts. It has to be one of two things. Either there are more people in the top 20%, or the top 20% is recording more income. In other words, we're creating wealth.

Also this:

The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.

What the Post fails to note is that even if not a single Bush tax cut had passed, the tax share of the wealthiest 20% would have fallen to 64%. In other words, almost half the shift in the tax burden would have occurred without a single tax cut. Don't believe me? Look for yourself! The figures the Post used came from this report Check out the change in the tax burden that would have occurred under the tax laws of 2000.

So, now, let's look at the story Bubba ignores. First, we find that the top 20% of income earners pay 63.5% of all taxes, with the top 1% paying 20%. But according to some, they aren't paying their fair share. And they are right of course. They aren't paying their share; they're paying way more. It only gets worse if we look directly at income taxes, since according to the CBO, the top 20% are paying over 82% of all income taxes collected! The reason the tax burden has shifted is not because the wealthy are paying less, and the middle class is paying more, but because other Federal taxes (SS, Medicare, etc) are capped. You can only contribute so much, and so the highest income earners pay a lower effective rate since their contributions are capped.

One more quote from the Washington Post:

For the bottom 20 percent of households, the combined Bush tax cuts averaged $250 each. The middle 20 percent received $1,090, while the top 1 percent garnered $78,460, said Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee who analyzed the report.

Yep, like I said, nearly everybody got a tax cut, but I want to point out a subtle bait and switch in the Post article. All the numbers to this point come directly from the CBO publication. But these numbers don't. I searched the whole thing repeatedly, until I reread the Post article, and noticed that these numbers come from "Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee." I wonder where they got them, since they aren't sourced in the article? Also, isn't it odd that they are comparing the bottom 20% to the middle 20% to the upper 1%? Why the switch? Could it be to inflate the upper number so as to incite a bit of class envy? Obviously, by narrowing the range to the upper 1%, you're going to elevate the mean, but that's just a coincidence, right?

OK, enough. I think I've made my point. A seemingly carelessly tossed off line can conceal more deceptions than a magician's top hat, and Bubba is the master magician of East Tennessee.

Fortunately, the Crosswire blog has a representative for the right, who will be able to counter all of Bubba's propaganda, having the advantage of actually being in NYC. WestKnoxMomma (would it kill somebody to be a little creative?) is one of those great rarities, a blogger without an actual blog. As far as I can tell, this will be her first venture in the blogosphere. Here's wishing her lots of luck. She'll need it.

Her response to Bubba's deception as outlined above?

Those are all good things to hear, bubba. Hopefully, Bush will get to them since Kerry didn't.

Yeah, that'll show him.

She follows up with a nice little travelogue about going to NYC with a baby, and complaining about the lack of protests.

She's clearly fighting way above her weight class.

Too bad Michael didn't get Bill Hobbs to cover the other side; that would have been a debate worth following.

Posted by Rich at August 29, 2004 9:56 PM | TrackBack