So, in response to the Occupy Wall Street folks, Erick Erickson from RedState.com decided to start a competing "movement" called "We are the 53%." The idea behind the tag is that 53% of Americans pay income taxes and 47% don't, and the 47% should work harder and stop complaining. This is without a doubt one of the dumbest ideas of all time. To start with, the statistic it's based on is a common right-wing talking point that's also laughably misleading. Yes, a lot of people don't pay federal income taxes. Why? Well, first, a lot of those lucky duckies are poor. The idea seems to be that if you're lucky enough to be poor, you won't have to pay taxes! That's like being jealous of your neighbor whose friends chipped in to buy him a wheelchair after his legs were blown off. It's easy to join the 47%, Erick-- just stop working. Then go out and tell all those poor folks all about how awesome it is to be poor in America. Of course, the Heritage Foundation released a nice little survey recently pointing out that, if you're poor in America, odds are pretty good that you've got a refrigerator and a microwave. Great. Maybe Heritage can start a movement. Tag: "Being poor in America: Way better than being poor in Somalia." The second reason the tag is stupid (and probably the more relevant one) is that the implication is that 47% of the country doesn't pay taxes on their income. That's baloney. The federal income tax is a specific tax on income across the board. But for most Americans, federal income tax isn't the biggest tax they pay-- instead, it's the payroll tax. Which... is also levied on income. So they cherry-pick a tax and decide that, because a lot of people are too poor to pay it, they must be freeloading. Clever (except not).
Then there's the second reason that "movement" is stupid-- it's the implication that if only people wanted to get jobs, they could get them. It's a rehash of the absurd idea the Real Business Cycle folks like to float-- that downturns happen because people suddenly decide that they value leisure time more than working. Their explanation for the Great Depression boils down to a quarter of the population dropping everything and deciding that they all simultaneously wanted to go on a long vacation. And also stand in bread lines. Yes, the idea is as dumb as it sounds. So, implicit in the "53%ers" demands is the idea that the reason a lot of people are out of work is they're not working hard enough to find jobs that are out there. Which is a patently ridiculous idea-- if taken to its logical conclusion, it suggests that, in the last 3 years, twice as many people have become lazy and stopped looking for jobs that are out there. The reality, of course, is that jobs aren't hiding in the woods waiting to be found-- if businesses are selling a lot of their product, they'll expand and hire workers. And they won't keep those jobs secret from the unemployed so that they'll have to finish a scavenger hunt to get hired.
But the problem is that those businesses ARE seeing weak sales. And the result is 9% unemployment and frustrated people protesting all over the country (whether they're protesting at the right places is a different question).
Two reasons: 1) Misleading statistic, 2) Economy is cyclical-- implication is that 10% of the population suddenly became super lazy in 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment