Ezra Klein and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Tax Calculator (Hillary supporters help spread FUD)

[think]

The truth about that so called "tax calculator" that Hillary fans are using to scare people. Like usual they are pushing a disingenuous effort to smear Bernie Sanders.

Ezra Klein and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Tax Calculator

byJim Naureckas - Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2016 by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

?itok=Z4yiJyBD

The website Vox (3/25/16) has what editor-in-chief Ezra Klein describes as an “excellent tax calculator” that, in its headline’s promise, “Tells You How Each Presidential Candidate’s Tax Plan Affects You.”

Actually, it does no such thing; it’s a gimmick that is entirely useless except as a deceptive advertisement for Hillary Clinton.

As a gimmick, it’s pretty simple. You put in your annual income (actually, your “expanded cash income,” which you probably don’t know even if you know what it is), whether you’re single or married and whether you have no kids, one kid, or two or more kids. And then it tells you what Donald Trump’s, Ted Cruz’s, Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ “plans mean for your federal tax liability.”

~Snip~

Mostly, that big number you get for the Sanders tax hike when you plug in your income is the payroll tax that employers will pay to cover the cost of a single-payer healthcare system. As the Tax Policy Center, which worked with Vox to create the calculator, explains:

We’re including payroll taxes, excise taxes and corporate income taxes as well as individual income taxes…. Most economists think employers pass their share of the tax on to workers in the form of lower wages.

Read more:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/30/ezra-klein-and-terrible-horrible-no-good-tax-calculator

[JackInGreen]

1. So it's a bullshit test

that will spread more bullshit from the shit dealers.
Fab.

[think]

2. Yep. Lying by purposely manipulating statistics to fit their desired meme.

It's disgusting.

I'm hoping Hillary supporters were just duped and didn't understand these manipulations before spreading the FUD here.

[FlatBaroque]

3. When your stock in trade is bullshit

That's about all can be delivered.

[think]

6. Yep. And there's been plenty of bullshit being delivered here lately about these tax lies. /nt

[cosmicone]

4. Itis extremely accurate .. unless one is a Sanders supporter

and it causes butthurt.

The percentages are exactly from Sanders' website.

[think]

5. The "calculator" results include taxes that will be paid by your EMPLOYER.

It includes taxes you will not pay. And it doesn't explain that many business already offering healthcare will see an actual reduction in costs. At the very least it fails to consider the amounts already being paid for health care by both the employee and the employer.

[cosmicone]

9. That is just a spin n/t

[think]

11. Do the figures provided by Vox's "tool" include what your employer pays or not?

[rhett o rick]

7. Any lie to gain an advantage or "The Ends Justify the Means". Anything to help the

Wealthy maintain their control and continue looting the lower classes. Anything so the Clintons can continue to amass larger and larger fortune. That's the Conservative goal, rip off the lower classes.

It's not that the wish us to die, they just want our resources and if we die, they view it as collateral damage.

[think]

15. It's really frustrating because the lie spreads faster than the truth. So Hillary supporters

are successfully damaging Bernie's campaign by spreading these lies.

Hopefully the Bernie camp will make sure to get on top of these lies. The M$M isn't going to help. They'll spread the FUD and remain silent when called on it as they already have.

[Doctor_J]

8. I'm disheartened that Clinton's supporters have adopted language straight from Fox "News",

Reason Rag, AEI, and other conservative organs. Even if it was honest, which it isn't, it would still have a far right slant. If Ezra Klein and other Serious People are more worried about taxes than about the millions of people in the US without healthcare (or with insurance they can't afford), they should vote Republican.

[think]

13. It's disgusting & some Hillary supporters seem to be willing to double down when even presented

the fats that the tool includes taxes paid for by employers.

It's down right shameful that some are so disingenuous...

[MisterP]

22. adopted? that's been their ideology since Tsongas

[cosmicone]

10. Why can't Bernie people proudly support the high taxation

instead of spinning it as untrue.

Integrity would dictate that they would say, "Yes, Bernie will raise taxes astronomically but in return you get more." Instead, what I see is a spin that the calculator is not accurate!!!

[think]

14. The calculator includes taxes paid by your employer and not you and is completely bogus

[cosmicone]

17. Yeah right

Employers are going to pay hundreds of thousands in additional payroll taxes.

They will lay off massive numbers of people to cut costs. Anyone should see it.

Robots and automation equipment become cheaper.

What a plan!!!!!

[think]

18. Do you ever read before you post? Good grief....

[rhett o rick]

21. It's Cave Think Tank tactic #9 called "slash and dash" State untruths and then bail. nm

[KoKo]

12. K&R!

[amborin]

16. turns out, much of what he says is bogus:

Vox and the False Consensus of 'Most Economists Agree'

Vox: "Most Experts"When it launched in 2014, “new media” outlet Vox prided itself on having an analysis-driven approach, “explaining” the news to its readers in a clear and concise way. A rhetorical tic appearing in much of their reporting, however, belies those noble motives: the reliance on phantom economic and expert consensus.

Given that Vox does little original reporting, much of their selling point is quick, easy-to-understand analysis. A meaningful amount of this analysis, however, pivots on the toxic cliche, “most economists agree/think/say/believe,” and its equally toxic cousin, “most experts agree/think/say/believe.” This cliche is frequently used without a shred of evidence for said consensus.

Vox is by no means alone. This is a common trope found at the The Economist and other “wonky” neoliberal outlets. The problem with the refrain, aside from the fact that it’s a weasel phrase that wouldn’t pass muster in a 10th grade rhetoric class, is that it’s designed to posture, to aggrandize an argument based solely on the insertion of an entirely made-up consensus of bespectacled, important men hovering over data and dispassionately reaching conclusions that happen to dovetail with the author’s own positions.
“Most Experts”:
Should You Own Foreign Stocks?

Most experts believe you should invest at least some of your retirement savings in international stocks. But there’s surprisingly little consensus about how much.

What polling data supports this assertion? Matthew Yglesias only links to one Wall Street Journal straw poll of “ten experts” who all say you should, but they’re all working at wealth management firms — what are they supposed to say, don’t invest in this large, emerging sector? How did the opinion of ten people who work in wealth management become “most experts”? It’s never made clear. At best, it’s “some” experts, but this sounds far less sexy than the superlative “most.”
The Most Predictable Disaster in the History of the Human Race

In one of their half–dozen commercials for Bill Gates (who put $1 billion into Vox’s main investor Comcast in 1997 and whose Gates Foundation owns 945,000 Class A “special” shares in Comcast as well), Vox asserted Gates’ value proposition using the mystical “most experts” consensus:

Whether through the WHO or some other mechanism, most experts agree that the world needs some kind of emergency-response team for dangerous diseases.

Maybe “most experts” do agree the world needs an emergency-response team for dangerous diseases, but there’s no proof offered of this. Instead, Gates’ sales pitch for his project is asserted as axiomatic.
Bernie Sanders Is Creating a New and Untested Electoral Force in American Politics

Sanders’ coalition looks very different from what Obama created, or what most experts had expected.

What did experts expect? It’s never explained.
Why Police Officers Often Resort to Lethal Force as Their First Response

While the public often expects a police officer to use a Taser — or, if the officer only has a gun, to shoot the suspect in the leg — in any possible situation, most experts and police guidelines side with Belmar.

No evidence for this consensus is provided.
Iraq’s Sunnis and Minorities Will Probably Suffer the Most

ISIS’s military defeats by the Iraqi government, Shia militias and Kurdish fighters have convinced most experts that the group can’t hold on to its territory forever.

No group has ever held on to its territory forever. This fatuous non-statement is meant to give the appearance that progress is being made against ISIS without having to actually show this is the case.
“Most Economists”
Martin O’Malley Wants Boosts to Social Security That Even Bernie Sanders Hasn’t Called For

…such as that put forward by the Obama administration, to adopt “chained CPI,” which is a method of calculating population-wide price inflation that most economists regard as more technically accurate than the current measure, which would effectively cut benefits.

What percent of economists think this? One of the problems with the weasel phrase “most are” is that it spans a wide chasm. Somewhere between 50 percent and 99.999 percent, since anything under the former would be “some” and anything over the latter would be “all.”

The same asserted majority made an appearance in a September 16, 2015, Vox piece:

Most economists feel that a “chained” index like personal consumption expenditure deflator would be more accurate, and those indexes paint a more optimistic picture of income growth.

Study: Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Plan Is Almost Twice as Expensive as He Says

There’s also a dispute as to who would pay the employer payroll tax. Like most economists, Thorpe treats the employer payroll tax as paid entirely by workers. In an email, he explained that he’s following standard practice used by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation in calculating their estimates of legislation. “CBO and JCT assume that total employer compensation is fixed so this is fully borne by workers,” he writes.

Official US government models becomes “most economists.”
That Time Lindsey Graham Crafted a Bill to Destroy the Economy

Also, the association of cap and trade with a weak economy is misleading, as most economists say a cap-and-trade program (or other price on carbon) is the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions.

No evidence for this consensus is provided.
Here’s What the Tax Code Would Look Like if Bernie Sanders Got Everything He Wanted

A 6.2 percent income-based premium paid by employers on wage income. This is basically a payroll tax, and most economists agree that the cost of “employer-paid” payroll taxes are passed on entirely to workers in the form of lower wages in the long run.

Again, no evidence is provided of what “most economists” think. (As FAIR noted on Tuesday, Vox’s dubious “tax calculator” pivoted almost entirely on this notion of what “most economists” agreed with.)
5 Reasons Why the Shrinking GDP Isn’t a Reason to Panic

…but here are a few reasons why economists and markets are shaking off the biggest economic contraction in more than five years.

An economic consensus is just asserted by the author. One week later:
Jobs Day Has Arrived!

And yet despite that awful news, most economists are downright complacent about the state of things.

Here the evidence for the attitude of “most economists” is a link back to the previous article, where the evidence for consensus is the author’s assertion. The economy is just dandy and the reason we know this is because a phantom “most economists” say so.
Clean Energy Tax Credits Mostly Go to the Affluent. Is There a Better Way?

To most economists, climate policies are either a carbon price or “second best.” We needn’t rehearse all that again.

The link goes to a Grist article that questions the uncritical “reverence” for a carbon tax held by “many economists and climate hawks,” rather than to any actual evidence about what “most economists” think.

***

Sometimes Vox does actually link to something at least attempting consensus, as they have done here and here. But more often, even when an attempt at consensus is reached, it’s plagued with blinders that render the “most economists” distinction suspect.

For example, the University of Chicago “poll” that sampled economists about the value of Uber, showing uniform consensus about how great it was, did not contain a single African-American or Hispanic economist. Does the class and racial composition —let alone the University of Chicago’s notorious association with free-market ideology—affect what this cohort of “most economists” thinks? Probably. Does anyone at Vox care? Evidently not.

Sometimes the “most economists” device is just a lazy placeholder, and it’s entirely possible that “most economists,” if subjected to anything approaching a scientific poll, would actually agree with the author’s assertion. Sometimes vague intuitions about what others think are true!

But like Fox News‘ use of “some say,” “most economists” or “most experts” is often a weasel phase that permits the writer to smuggle in their own opinion and ideology where it ought not be, and couches their own subjective, ad hoc analysis as something reflecting scientific consensus. Certainly, if “most experts” on a subject agree, what they agree on must therefore be objectively and undoubtedly true.

Ultimately, the “most expert/economists” cliche is a lazy appeal to authority that shortcuts actually showing one’s homework—how one got from premise to conclusion. If the news is going to be “explained” rather than just asserted, most media critics agree that Vox should drop this tic altogether.

Read the original post here.
FAIR's Website

[think]

19. Thank you for the additional information from FAIR. Much appreciated. /nt

[brentspeak]

20. Here's the link to that:

http://fair.org/home/vox-and-the-false-consensus-of-most-economists-agree/