Comments

1
what do you expect when nearly half the population is below the mean in intelligence?
2
It's even better than that: in 2009, when unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketed, average wages fell across the board, and most people were struggling to get by, the incomes of the very tippy-topmost folks went UP FIVE TIMES. Not five percent; five TIMES. These people -- the top 74 earners in the country -- earned more than the bottom NINETEEN MILLION Americans.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na…

We need to restore the top income tax to at least the rate it was under that notorious communist Ronald Reagan.
3
@Fnarf: before or after his tax cuts?
4
Diagnosis: Psychosis
5
It's also almost certainly due to the tenuous grasp most Americans (hell, most humans) have on mathematics.
6
The richest 1 percent got a fivefold increase in their wealth in 2009.

While the rest of us got zero jobs while they outsourced US jobs overseas.

FACT.

(source: Washington Post, IRS)
7
The reason the phrase "European-style Socialism" has to be repeated every five minutes through the right-wing noise machine is because if Americans aren't constantly reminded to hate Europeans just for being from Europe, they might catch wise to the fact that the citizens in those dreaded "socialist" countries seem happy with having governments that actually provide services for them. Since even a cursory examination of the numbers shows that people living in countries with single-payer health systems are getting a better deal than we are, there needs to be some intangible reason why we must never follow them down that path. That intangible is "freedom."

And yes, Americans have always been profoundly deluded about living in an egalitarian society. If they don't hear a new Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story at least once a day they might start noticing that painful burning sensation emanating from their hindquarters; thankfully this is never allowed to happen.

8
@ 5 And reality in general. We're a nation of solipsists.
9
Apparently, the only thing Americans hate more than burning to death is washing fire extinguisher foam out of their eyes.
10
@6, you are proving everyone's point about people not grasping basic math. Your FACT is wrong, as my post @2 (with link) shows. It's not the top one percent; it's the top 74 people whose incomes rose fivefold. You're misremembering the article. As you always do. and in so doing you are diluting your point, as you always do, and giving your enemies more ammunition, as you always do.
11
Voted no. It opens up a road for the state to tax people in my bracket (50-70k) with an income tax and that's a no go for me.

I will always vote no for any income tax at all.
12
@11, you SHOULD be paying a little income tax on that income, and so should I. It's much more sensible than 10% sales tax or our higher-than-average property tax. Smart states have a mix of all three.

But regardless, this initiative doesn't open up any roads to anything like that. The only road opened is one towards fiscal sanity.
13
@11: what about the WA state legislature leads you to believe that they could get their shit together enough to make that happen?
14
@10 Both statements are true. Just because one set of tax info says one thing about a larger group of people does not preclude a different and more precise analysis saying the same thing about a smaller subset.

Although it was national data, so you have power effects that cause analysis to break down when you drop down to the municipal or zip code level of the datasets.

@11 actually, you'd be getting a tax cut. Unless that's drug money.
15
@14, no, both statements are not true. My statement is true, yours is false.

Yours is misremembered from the very same article that I cited (which did not appear in the Washington Post, another confusion of yours).

Your bolus of "subsets" and "datasets" and "power effects" is just the usual blah blah blah you mash together out of unrelated bits and pieces.

Fact: the top 74 earners increased their earnings (not wealth) fivefold in 2009. That's what I said. I gave a citation which you can click on and read.

Lie: "The richest 1 percent got a fivefold increase in their wealth in 2009". That's what YOU said. It's not even remotely close to true.

Your citation ("Washington Post, IRS") is also a lie, since nothing remotely resembling this garbage has appeared in the Post, nor do you have any idea what the IRS has. You're not privy to other people's tax returns, and tax returns have nothing to do with wealth, anyways; they record income.

You don't know the difference between "income" and "wealth". That much is clear.

By doing this you have mangled and destroyed what was a pretty good argument before you got to it. Once again, one has to wonder, are you completely stupid, or are you actually working for the Republicans? Because you embody every slanderous cliche Republicans use to describe liberals -- that they are morons who don't know what they're talking about. YOU are a moron who doesn't know what he's talking about. Not me.

Short version: you're wrong, and you're not helping.
16
Fnarf, never try to teach a pig to sing. It just wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Although it is, on occasion, HI-larious.
17
I'm not trying to teach it to sing. I'm trying to make it go away. Alas, Will is The Man Who Knew No Shame.
18
I don't think I've ever seen Fnarf wrong about something, but he's wrong when (@12) he says we have higher-than-average property tax.

If you were to take the biggest city from each state nationwide (including DC), and sort that list of 51 from highest to lowest, property-tax-wise, you'd find Seattle way down at 43.
19
@18, we're a state, not a city. And our overall take from property tax is about average or a little bit over. That chart is misleading because our property values are so high compared to places like Alabama where no one wants to live, so the percentage doesn't tell the whole story.
20
Property tax in many states varies wildly depending on the city you live in, so making a comparison based on state alone doesn't tell the whole story, either.

Besides, there are plenty of places in Washington where no one wants to live, either. You can buy a house in Aberdeen for $15K.
21
@1 You are not doing anything to convince anyone you are not in the lower half, although your comment made me laugh (at you). I won't argue the fact that my reading this and responding a week after the election is also questionable, but next time you whip that little quip out remember that by the mathematical definition of "mean" one should expect EXACTLY half the population to be lower than the mean in intelligence. In this case, the fact that the mean is slightly higher than the "median" (which is the correct term for that exact midpoint) only means that your scale for intelligence is biased such that the smart half of a population tend to be smarter than the dumb half is dumb. Since "intelligence" is much more of a qualitative term than quantitative, calculating a mean (versus a median) is pretty meaningless in the first place. Just saying.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.