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What terrible analysis. "Saez and Zucman train much of their focus on the 400 wealthiest Americans. This group makes up 0.0003% of households. The New York Tim
by htfu 7y ago
What terrible analysis.
"Saez and Zucman train much of their focus on the 400 wealthiest Americans. This group makes up 0.0003% of households. The New York Times column describing the Saez-Zucman estimates reports that last year this group had a 23% combined federal, state and local tax rate.
In fact, the jury is still out on that number, which is based on a forecast of what income might have been last year. (The data for 2018 aren’t in. If you filed for an extension, your taxes for 2018 aren’t due until next week.) Even if it turns out to be correct, it doesn’t follow that the U.S. system is not progressive."
Basically saying "sure, by their metric they're right, but whatever, so there. I win!!"
- refurb 7y agoThat seems like a reasonable argument to me. The data they used wasn’t actual data.
- htfu 7y agoI think we all know a ten-point swing is not forthcoming. Especially looking back, it's not like this is the first time someone's run the numbers... And most of the piece is spent arguing against something somewhere between an aside and a strawman, then towards the end they admit as much(!), but have nothing substantial to add. Whether your gut agrees with the "message", rhetorically it's just really awful.
- refurb 7y agoMaybe. Another thing that jumped out to me is why the top 400? Why not 500? Why not 100? 400 is an odd number to choose. We know the very top earners tend to be cases of windfalls. You sell your company, you offload all your shares, you sell a ton of land. Those can have odd tax implications. My guess is that they cherry picked the top 400 because it supported their conclusion. And the tax rates were a 1-off event that doesn’t normally happen.
- htfu 7y agoHow are you commenting on something like this without knowing about Forbes 400? Are you serious?
- refurb 7y agoHuh? The Forbes 400 have a number of non-Americans on the list. They don't pay US taxes at all. And doing a study where you look at the top 400 because "Forbes has a list of 400" makes zero sense. Hack job!