40,000 New Yorkers Pay 50%+ of the city's taxes!

[rojse]

Can you imagine what would happen if these 40,000 people decided to take a year off?

Other people would step up, make their money, and be paying the same taxes.

And I don't think those who went on a year vacation without notice would be too welcome back, either.

 

[Alceste]

And actually, why does the source the Heritage Foundation matter at all? I could've just as easily said my sources are this this and this, and listed all the places that they site, how would that make any difference? That is just a compilation of data, and it has it's own sources for each data point, so I still don't see how you can reasonably discredit my information without examining the sources listed by the article.

The source matters when you pick one that is famous for making "data" up to support a particular POV. Do you think the source matters when data comes from, say, Michael Moore? Or do you accept his statistics just as readily?

 

[Magic Man]

(emphasis mine)

1. That is what inflation IS. The same amount of money will buy different amounts of things. Accounting for inflation means you make the value of the money equal. So what I originally posted means:

Today, there are more people making what would be equal to 75k in 1979.

Not only are people making literally more than 75000/yr, they are making beyond the equal amount from 1979. I understand I may not be explaining this entirely well, but I dont know how else to put it.

Something that costs 75k in 04 would've cost you 26,832.19 in 1979. There are more people making over that amount today.

Then why not just give the 1979 equivalent of $75,000? It's kind of odd to phrase it the way you did.

That would happen if this were an average. This is different. If you take all the yearly incomes of every family in America and ordered them from least to greatest, the value in the middle, equal distance from the wealthiest and poorest, is the median. No matter how much the top values raise, this will not effect the median value.

EX. 1 2 3 4 5 (median is 3) 1 2 3 500 624 (median is 3)

Ah, I see. Anything to make it say what you want. Gotcha.

So people that use the laundromat are not living like civil human beings? People who rely on public transportation (or walking) are not living like civil human beings? If that's the case how many people in NYC are not living like civil human beings?

Let's put it this way, I want a higher standard for everyone.

(emphasis again mine)

Everyone has the opportunity to work for a living, and not be discriminated against for race, gender, religion etc. Everyone has the opportunity to go to school, and not be discriminated against. Everyone has the opportunity to make the best of their lives they can. This does not guarantee equal results.

No one wants equal results. We just want results that start at having food, shelter, clothers, healthcare and some amenities. As long as everyone has those, then you can go as far above that as you want.

I for one, don't think the person that shows up to work on time and works extremely well should have to earn the same amount as the guy that only shows up half the time. And I don't think that if you make poor choices you should be helped out by everyone else.

Neither do I, and neither does anyone else. That's why that's a strawman. I think if you don't have the basics, you should be helped out by others, even if it's because of poor choices. There should be a method in place of helping those people not make poor choices the next time. That way, we have to help them for a short while and then they'll be fine, and everyone wins.

 

[Frostbyte]

The source matters when you pick one that is famous for making "data" up to support a particular POV. Do you think the source matters when data comes from, say, Michael Moore? Or do you accept his statistics just as readily?

Whether I believe Michael Moore or not, is based upon where he gets his information. The Heritage Foundation listed each one of their sources. Some of Michael Moore's information is valid, because he got it from valid sources. If he makes it up or actually says something that is not true, then it's a different story.

What they did is found information to support their cause (I agree) but they also revealed where that information came from. And as of yet no one has shown that the data itself is wrong in anyway whatsoever. Because in order to do that, you have to prove that the sources that they found the information from are faulty, or find they information they chose not to "cherry pick."
If the heritage foundation created those numbers based on their own study, or did not list sources, you would have a valid point. However each of their points are cited to a source other than The Heritage Foundation, so each of those sources must be examined. In the case of those that were cited to other articles, we must look at the data from the sources listed by those individual articles.

Then why not just give the 1979 equivalent of $75,000? It's kind of odd to phrase it the way you did.

My apologies. It was difficult to frame it in the way that gave the picture from 79-04. I did not intend for it to be confusing.

Ah, I see. Anything to make it say what you want. Gotcha.

Excuse me? That's what the median is. The average would be increased by adding value to the upper areas, but the median would not. It's mathematics. For the median value to increase, more people must be making at or above the number. I didn't manipulate anything. It's a fact. More people are making at or above that amount of money.

The three "measures of central tendancy" are mean, median and mode. The mean is the average, the median is the number (when listed in ascending order, or descending for that matter) that has half the values above, and half the values below it. The mode is the number that appears most frequently.

Explain to me in what way I manipulated the data.

Let's put it this way, I want a higher standard for everyone.

Fair enough. And the standard has been improving. Why does it matter if it improves for some faster than others?

No one wants equal results. We just want results that start at having food, shelter, clothers, healthcare and some amenities. As long as everyone has those, then you can go as far above that as you want.

And the reality is, most poor homes in America, at least, have those. But taking a higher percentage as you move up the income bracket is cruel. It prevents people from ever moving up in life, because if they move up slowly, as soon as they make X amount of dollars, they're taxed out of it, and end up with less usable income than they had when they were "making" less. The wealthy pay a disproportionate amount of the nations taxes. Of course they will give more in dollars, but the percentages we tax them by, particularly in some states, is too much.

There are places (NY, NJ, CA and one other state in particular...can't remember the fourth sorry) where the wealthy are about to have their earnings halved. New proposed state taxes along with the national tax increases, would mean these people are paying 50-53% of their income straight to the government. How is that right? these people worked through, probably, extra schooling, they had to work hard at their jobs, be innovative and valuable. Don't they deserve more money?

Neither do I, and neither does anyone else. That's why that's a strawman. I think if you don't have the basics, you should be helped out by others, even if it's because of poor choices. There should be a method in place of helping those people not make poor choices the next time. That way, we have to help them for a short while and then they'll be fine, and everyone wins.

Maybe not here, but there are people that do want that. There are people that want communism, and that system does not reward exceptional workers or punish poor ones.

Do you really believe that poor choices should be supported? To a degree maybe but if someone continually refuses to get a job (2/3 of people on TANF do not work) and wastes their money away, I do not think they should be aided by the people. It's why people don't give cash to homeless men on the sidewalk, because "they're just going to spend it on drugs and booze."

 

[The Voice of Reason]

And actually, why does the source the Heritage Foundation matter at all?

So, if someone posted a two page manifesto that they found on "The Daily Kos" website, you would accept it at face value, as long as they had cited their sources?

You see, Frosty, everyone in America gets three or four spam emails each week, that make ridiculous claims about whatever the Republican talking point is for that day. We've all been bombarded with the emails about all of the people that the Clinton's have had killed, the smear campaign against John Kerry, the attacks on Obama's citizenship (currently the topic of a thread by Zippy), etc.

We long ago passed the saturation point, where people now just see them (and the article that you posted from the Heritage Foundation) for the wasted bandwidth that they are.

If you wish to have credibility on this board, take the time to find articles that emanate from somewhere other than Rush Limbaugh's backside, or Sean Hannity's dreamworld. Quoting Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson just doesn't cut it in the real world, where people other than card carrying zealots have votes.

Now do you "get it"?

 

[Alceste]

What they did is found information to support their cause (I agree) but they also revealed where that information came from. And as of yet no one has shown that the data itself is wrong in anyway whatsoever. Because in order to do that, you have to prove that the sources that they found the information from are faulty, or find they information they chose not to "cherry pick."
If the heritage foundation created those numbers based on their own study, or did not list sources, you would have a valid point. However each of their points are cited to a source other than The Heritage Foundation, so each of those sources must be examined. In the case of those that were cited to other articles, we must look at the data from the sources listed by those individual articles.

As I said before, when Crest tells me 8 out of 10 dentists recommend Crest, I don't bother tracing their "sources" to determine whether or not the claim is true. If I want reliable information, I just go get it from a reliable source. I don't try to weed it out from the rantings of a propagandist as a matter of principle.

For what it's worth, even though I agree with Michael Moore's views, I don't take any of his "facts" as "facts" either, and I don't go looking for sources to back him up. IMO, that's a backwards way of doing things. First you get your facts, then you make an opinion based on your facts. You don't first get an opinion from somebody else and then look at the limited array of facts they claim to have found to back it up.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

... What they did is found information to support their cause (I agree) but they also revealed where that information came from. And as of yet no one has shown that the data itself is wrong in anyway whatsoever. Because in order to do that, you have to prove that the sources that they found the information from are faulty, or find they information they chose not to "cherry pick."

Uh, no.

You can't seem to grasp the idea that someone can take a perfectly valid source of data, and manipulate it to support a position that is contrary to what the data actually says.

Since you didn't seem to see it the first five times you've been told, I'll say it again for you -
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION HAS A HISTORY OF DOING JUST THAT.

THEY HAVE NO CREDIBILITY.

 

[Frostbyte]

[FONT=&quot]The Heritage foundation may be biased, it is evident that they are. However, once again, the information that they list may still be valid. They take information from the US department of labor, the census bureau, the UN, and other completely credible sources. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]

They take diagrams and charts directly from these sources and provide them. In what way are those diagrams wrong? They have been copied directly from the studies of programs and agencies that are credible. How are they wrong? The USDA, US census bureau, dept of labor, the UN, agricultural agencies, the source list is varied and credible.

If I present an argument, you can't just say that I'm leaving out key facts or misrepresenting data without actually, I don't know, proving I did that.

Show me an example of data that was left out, or data that was misrepresented. Do YOUR homework.

[/FONT]

If you wish to have credibility on this board, take the time to find articles that emanate from somewhere other than Rush Limbaugh's backside, or Sean Hannity's dreamworld. Quoting Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson just doesn't cut it in the real world, where people other than card carrying zealots have votes.

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]First of all, I have yet to quote any of those people. I don't even know who Jerry Falwell or James Dobson are (the names sound familiar but I don't know anything about them) I am only aware that Pat Robertson is a television preacher.[/FONT]
Second of all, Rush Limbaugh has the the highest accuracy rating in radio at least, that may also apply to other medium.

And third, you're not going to accept ANYTHING. I list, because they're all just nasty evil right-wing liars. Anything that presents a different view from you is obviously not credible. Something can have a view point and still have legitimate facts.
And you still ignore the graphs and charts, from the actual sources! Whats wrong with them? Are the Dept of Labor, UN, USDA, and the Census Bureau too right-wing?

 

[Magic Man]

Excuse me? That's what the median is. The average would be increased by adding value to the upper areas, but the median would not. It's mathematics. For the median value to increase, more people must be making at or above the number. I didn't manipulate anything. It's a fact. More people are making at or above that amount of money.

The three "measures of central tendancy" are mean, median and mode. The mean is the average, the median is the number (when listed in ascending order, or descending for that matter) that has half the values above, and half the values below it. The mode is the number that appears most frequently.

Explain to me in what way I manipulated the data.

By using the way that seems to indicate what you want it to. I didn't say you were so much changing the meaning of "median". I just said you were using the one thing that might look like it points to your correctness, even if other ways of looking at it would contradict it.

Fair enough. And the standard has been improving. Why does it matter if it improves for some faster than others?

I'm not sure what you mean. Who am I saying it should improve faster for? What I'm saying is that there should be a minimum for everyone. It would only improve for those under that minimum. For others nothing would change.

And the reality is, most poor homes in America, at least, have those. But taking a higher percentage as you move up the income bracket is cruel. It prevents people from ever moving up in life, because if they move up slowly, as soon as they make X amount of dollars, they're taxed out of it, and end up with less usable income than they had when they were "making" less. The wealthy pay a disproportionate amount of the nations taxes. Of course they will give more in dollars, but the percentages we tax them by, particularly in some states, is too much.

Noi, that's not the way it works. First, most of the poor homes in the country don't have those things. You have to establish what is considered "poor" by the people who put those numbers together first, and something tells me many of us wouldn't consider many of those households poor. Plus it certainly doesn't take into account the homeless, which is a very significant portion of poor people.

As far as taxes go, it's not like the more you make, the more you pay to the point of never actually making more money. If you make $35,000 instead of $25,000 you're still going to bring home around $8,000 more a year. So, yes, you can get somewhere. Claiming that you can't because you just pay more taxes is dishonest and wrong.

And, yes, the wealthy pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. Because they can. They already have the $60,000 a year it takes to support a couple comfortably, plus the other $60,000 a year for all of the luxuries they want, plus another $60,000 for extra luxuries. So, beyond that they make another $60,000 after taxes instead of $100,000. Not only will they survive, but they'll live very well without that extra $40,000.

There are places (NY, NJ, CA and one other state in particular...can't remember the fourth sorry) where the wealthy are about to have their earnings halved. New proposed state taxes along with the national tax increases, would mean these people are paying 50-53% of their income straight to the government. How is that right? these people worked through, probably, extra schooling, they had to work hard at their jobs, be innovative and valuable. Don't they deserve more money?

First, what tax bracket is that? I'm guessing it's somewhere in the $300,000+ range. In that case, it is fine. As I just pointed out, they still have $150,000+ left that pays for a nice, middle class living with $90,000 left over.

Maybe not here, but there are people that do want that. There are people that want communism, and that system does not reward exceptional workers or punish poor ones.

Of course there are people who want those things. There are people who like to murder people. Are you in the habit of arguing how wrong it is to murder people? I would assume not, so why even bring up this argument?

Do you really believe that poor choices should be supported?

I didn't say poor choices should be supported. I said people who make poor choices should be supported to a degree.

To a degree maybe but if someone continually refuses to get a job (2/3 of people on TANF do not work) and wastes their money away, I do not think they should be aided by the people.

Did you miss the part about how we should not just help those people financially, but also help them make better decisions in the future, so that that help is only short-lived? It seems to me you skipped that just so you could continue to argue this point.

It's why people don't give cash to homeless men on the sidewalk, because "they're just going to spend it on drugs and booze."

Right, which is why people should instead give those people shoes or food or help in some other way. We are in the habit of trying to just throw money at problems to make them go away. Sometimes it takes more than that.

 

[Alceste]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]
Show me an example of data that was left out, or data that was misrepresented. Do YOUR homework.[/FONT]

No thank you. When I get on a "discrediting" bender, I'm too thorough, and it's too time consuming. Besides, other, wiser folk than me have already discredited the Heritage Foundation a thousand times over. I will reserve my critical media analysis skills for resources people might otherwise take seriously.

On top of that, the HF article is opinion, not fact - that opinion being that the American poor are better off than everybody else's poor. As the editorial is a qualitative judgment of the relative value of air conditioners and square footage in any assessment of quality of life, it is excluded from the realm of fact and firmly entrenched in the realm of opinion. Knowing the difference between fact and opinion (including opinion dressed up with cherry-picked facts) is the crucial first step before embarking on any media analysis crusade, and in this case it's not worth the effort.

You are suggesting that because they might have quoted an accurate fact or two, the opinion should be taken more seriously.

I disagree.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

And you still ignore the graphs and charts, from the actual sources! Whats wrong with them? Are the Dept of Labor, UN, USDA, and the Census Bureau too right-wing?

Good lord, man! Are you daft?

You can quote a perfectly legitimate source, and still twist what it represents to paint a false picture.

The Heritage Foundation has done exactly that in the past. They have twisted data so badly, that the authors whose work was cited have issued written rebuttals of the conclusions reached by the Heritage Foundation when twisting their work.

Do you follow that concept? At all?

 

[Sententia]

You see, Frosty, everyone in America gets three or four spam emails each week, that make ridiculous claims about whatever the Republican talking point is for that day.

Yes but is it Rush or Coulter? I heard the former wore a shirt color coordinated with the color of his heart and soul and the latter is attempting to debate Maher in NYC, Boston and Chicago next week.

Im not sure it matters or that the republican party is all that important anymore. They went from being in control and the majority of everything to absolutely nothing... almost overnight. And then Jindal speaks out against Obama and Coulter Backstabs him? Where is the party cohesion here?

 

[The Voice of Reason]

I heard the former wore a shirt color coordinated with the color of his heart and soul ...

Is there a color that is darker than jet black?

 

[Sententia]

Is there a color that is darker than jet black?

The color of Rush's shirt is actually blacker... But were you the fantastical and mythical almighty you could see a blacker color... That of Coulters heart and Rush's soul.... (Maybe we should Ask Mr. Diety!)

 

[Alceste]

The color of Rush's shirt is actually blacker... But were you the fantastical and mythical almighty you could see a blacker color... That of Coulters heart and Rush's soul.... (Maybe we should Ask Mr. Diety!)

If the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world had shirts matching the colour of their hearts and souls, they would be just like this guy's tie.