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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (149123)	10/26/2004 4:01:18 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Sorry. You will have to do much better than that. The lie is not determined by an adversary's contextual adaptation.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (149123)	10/26/2004 6:29:42 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

OT "Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans" Most of the tax cuts did. The biggest part of the tax cut probably did not. There are different ways to measure this. 1 - Each person who pays less taxes has a tax cut. By that measure Bush's statement is true. 2 - Measure by the biggest percentage of federal income tax decrease. By that standard Bush's statement would also be true. The tax payers with the lowest incomes dropped off the rolls completely. They had a 100% tax reduction. Using the data from your link Bush Tax Cuts: The Burden Decreased for All Groups (More for some than others) Total Effective Federal Tax Rate 2004 Rates Change Due to Bush Cuts Lowest 20% 5.2% -1.5% Second 20% 11.1% -2.1% Middle 20% 14.6% -1.9% Fourth 20% 18.5% -2.1% Top 20% 23.8% -3.9% Top 5% 25.6% -5.2% Top 1% 26.7% -6.8% would support Bush not having lied. A 1.5% reduction in the tax rate for the lowest 20% of income earners reduces their effective tax burden by 23.6% (The 5.2% rate is 77.61% of their previous tax burden if the change due to the Bush cuts is -1.5%). The top5% would get a reduction of 16.9% when you calculate the same way. 3 - Measure by the number of points the official tax rates drop at different points. For example if someone's rate got cut from 28 to 15 percent that would be a drop of 13 percentage points. The top bracket went from (I think) 39% to 35% that is a reduction of 4%. Measured this way I'm not sure if Bush's statement is correct or not. Some people would have moved down only a little other people would have a more noticeable reduction. It's to complex for me to due the analysis, I don't have the data, or the time. And that ignores the other changes besides the rate changes which would make the caluclation even more complex. 4- Measured by how many points the "Total Effective Federal Tax rate goes down". This is apparently the method that you use, or should I say your source "taxpolicycenter.org" uses. If we believe your link (and I don't have any particular reason to doubt its claims about specific facts) than Bush's statement was not correct if you look at it this way. 5 - Measured by dollar reduction in the tax burden. By this method (usually used by Democratic politicians) Bush's tax cuts come out as clearly favoring the rich. I would imagine their are other possible methods. Bush's statement would only be shown to be incorrect if it was clear he meant the statement to be interpreted by method 5 or 6 and even then it would only be a lie if he knew that it was wrong. If he meant methods 1 or 2 he was right. If he meant 3 I'm not sure. If he meant 4 or 5 he was either mistaken on fact, or he misspoke, or he was lying. Political sound bites don't allow for a detailed explanation of exactly what Bush meant by "Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans". The fact that the statement can be interpreted in such a way that can latter be shown to be incorrect is hardly proof of a lie. Tim