Saturday, March 20, 2010

On Tea Party anti-taxism

Mark Thoma (Economist's View) quoting a remarkably wrong Bruce Bartlett article:
the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are […] it's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality.
Me, croaking in comments, paraphrased: the Tea Partiers haven't decided taxes are "too high" because they believe erroneous data; they have decided to choose erroneous data because they believe their taxes are too high. Unfortunately, as Converse found nearly 50 years ago, this is not an area where reason rules.

[edited on the day of publication for clarity]

1 comment:

The Arthurian said...

"Tea Partiers haven't decided taxes are 'too high' because they believe erroneous data; they have decided to choose erroneous data because they believe their taxes are too high."

Excellent, excellent, excellent. And well said, to boot.