It seems my post, Anatomy of Deceit: American Enterprise Institute Analysis of CBO Study, hit a nerve with Mark Perry, the author of the American Enterprise Institute analysis that was the subject of the post.
Just for laughs, I emailed Perry a link to my post.
To my surprise, he responded, repeatedly.
First, he took offense that I attributed a set of mechanical calculations to him, rather than to the CBO. He demanded I correct the post, which I was happy to do. But the correction he demanded was trivial, and his demand was telling. He was adamant that I clarify it was CBO, not he, who had punched two sets of numbers into a calculator to derive a third set of numbers. If my post had not hit home, would he have made such a huge deal over a trivial inaccuracy? I doubt it.
Then, he had a shill write an obscenely long response, in the comment section. He emailed me twice to make sure I would post it, then, once it was posted, pressured me to respond. I suggested to him that the comment would have more credibility if it came from him, but he seemed uninterested in speaking for himself. Here’s the email chain between Perry and me:
Lord:
Mr. Perry, for what it’s worth, here’s my take on your analysis of the CBO Study:
Perry:
Bob:
“Focus on line 5 of the first chart. The first 4 lines in the analysis are taken directly from a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Report. Line 5 is simply line 4 (taxes) divided by line 3 (total before tax income) and represents Perry’s determination of the tax rate paid in each quintile on its income from all sources. He does this because he wants to base his analysis income figures that include governmental benefits as income.”
It didn’t take long to find the first error in your blog post in your text above. Line 5 in my first chart is taken directly from the CBO report (see Table 4 above), and does not represent “Perry’s determination of the tax rate paid….. “ and I did not do this because I “want to base my analysis….”
A more careful reading of my blog post reveals your mis-reading and error above: “The data in the first five rows above appear in the CBO report (from Tables 1 and 4).”
Thanks in advance for correcting your mistake, I’ll send some additional corrections/responses later as I find time…..
Mark
Lord:
Right, but the heart of your analysis is line 6, which does not come from the CBO numbers.
I didn’t criticize your line 5. My criticism related to line 6 and below.
You also can see that my determination of the overall tax rate, 17.4, is off by .2 from the CBO study, but that goes nowhere as well.
Perry:
Yes, but you factually misrepresented my blog post saying that I calculated those average tax rates in Line 5 when I didn’t, they came directly from the CBO (as I said in my post), and I’m asking for a correction…
I have a colleague who has prepared a detailed response to your analysis and I think he’ll be posting a comment on your post shortly….
Lord:
I have no problem correcting it and will do so.
I’m a bit surprised that you would make an issue of this point, however. It’s just not significant.
Perry:
Don’t worry Bob, I have a devastating critique coming from a colleague that will completely refute and destroy in great detail everything you’ve written….
As long as you allow dissenting opinion on your blog…..
Lord:
Correction is made.
It’s mystifying that you took offense to that.
Perry:
Bob:
Comment is awaiting moderation, and I’m sure you will approve it, correct?
Mark
Lord:
Mark, the comment is up, but why don’t you post a response in your own name? Wouldn’t that be the more stand-up way to handle this? Responding through a shill seems a bit cowardly to me.
Perry:
No matter who posted the response to your blog post, I think you have an obligation to respond to the very substantive issues the commenter raises about the validity (and possible weakness) of your analysis……..
Lord:
Mark, I’ll likely respond, but I don’t have an obligation to respond to an anonymous commenter any more than you do to comments on your posts.
If you, as the author of the piece I critiqued, were to post a comment, I then would have some obligation to respond. But you don’t seem to have the courage to do that, Instead, you’ve chosen to respond through a shill.
You can’t have it both ways, Mark. If you’re not courageous enough to put your own name behind your comments, you can’t say I’m obligated to respond.
And even your shill won’t put his own name behind his comments. I won’t expose him, but it’s clear he’s unwilling to use his actual name when commenting on my posts, whereas he does so when commenting on yours.
Okay, enough about Perry. On to his “colleague” whose “devastating critique” was going to “completely refute and destroy in great detail everything [I’ve] written.”
Turns out, Perry’s “colleague” is a blog troll who goes by the pseudonym “famous fox.” I know what you’re wondering: Is famous fox Thucky reincarnated? No, he’s not, but he may as well be.
Famous Fox treated us to a 2,593 word comment. That’s four times the length of the typical op-ed piece.
Yet, despite all his words, Famous Fox was not exactly devastating, as Perry, who clearly had previewed the comment, promised. Much of what Foxy says is off topic and his thoughts are jumbled. To say his writing style is turgid would be to compliment it. Here’s a passage where he takes on my observation that Perry had counted government transfers both as income and as negative taxes:
“Whereas the CBO effectively treats governmental benefits as income that is subject to a zero tax rate, Perry treats governmental benefits as income that is subject to a tax rate of negative 100 percent.” [quoting me]
one might be left wondering “is the author innumerate?” if you earn $10 and pay 5 in tax, that’s 50% of income. if you earn 10, get 10 in transfers, and pay 5, it’s 25% of income. if that incremental 10 were taxed at -100%, then you would get back $10 making your net income after transfers and taxes 25 meaning you paid no net tax, but instead took in transfers of $20, paid gross tax of $5, and thus, had a net gain of $15.
what you meant to say would be that governmental transfers face a tax rate of zero, which is precisely so. yet they are still income. you can put them in the bank and spend them. again, congratulations, we’ll get you to understand the piece you tried so hilariously to critique yet.
Okay, Famous Fox, if Perry is not treating government transfers as tax paid at a negative rate, then how do you explain line 7 of his chart, which contains negative tax rates for the first three quintiles?
The point I was making was not difficult to follow. If a person had no market income (line 1 of Perry’s first chart) and $1,000 of tax-exempt government benefits (line 2 of Perry’s first chart), Perry’s analysis would say that person had $1,000 of total income (line 3 of Perry’s first chart) and -$1,000 in tax (line 6 of Perry’s first chart), for a tax rate of negative 100 percent (line 7 of Perry’s first chart).
What’s notable about Famous Fox’s comment, however, is not so much what he covered in his 2,593 words, but what he failed to cover. Although Perry, who had reviewed Famous Fox’s comment in advance, stated that his shill colleague would refute everything I had written, Perry and Famous Fox failed to refute the central point of my post, which is that the case Perry purported to make through his analysis was driven above all else by inequality of income.
In my post, I showed how even if the rate of tax applied to taxable income were grossly regressive, with the poor paying an effective tax rate on their taxable income at a rate far higher than the rich, Perry’s methodology nonetheless would reach the conclusion that the rich are paying more than their fair share, according to Perry’s definition of “fair share.”
Moreover, the worse inequality in America were to become, the better Perry’s case for the rich would be under his methodology. As I said in my post, Orwell himself couldn’t have written a better script.
And nothing Perry and his little friend said refuted that observation.
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It is obvious the “analysis” began with a premise, the rich pay too much in taxes relative to EVERYONE. Then it winds it way to an analysis to support the pre-determined premise. Of course they do, they have the income to do it. In fact they effective tax rate on high incomes is too low and the effective corporate tax rate is too low. None of them pay the published rate anyway. If it is such a burden, I am sure there are millions of low income Americans who would trade places with them, Louis.
FF, you seem incredibly insecure. OTOH, Bob is calm in his explanations.
Note to Readers:
It generally is against our policy to allow ridiculously long comments. I’ve done so in this case, and to a comment from the same person on a prior post only to demonstrate to Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute that we’re willing to post the comments of his shill.
That said, we’ve now gone out of our way to be courteous to Mr. Perry, who lacked the decency to comment in his own name, choosing instead to use a mouthpiece. Any further comments in excess of 250 words will be subject to deletion, as will multiple comments from the same person.
and you accuse others of cowardice?
wow.
(is that short enough?)
also: your initial piece was far from courteous and your repeated lies and obfuscations (he did not “respond through a mouthpiece” i chose to respond and he had nothing to add. why would he need to, your argument is in tatters)
censoring those who demolish your ideas and making them adhere to silly length and frequency shows who the coward here is.
thank you for your admission you are not up to fair debate.
wow, it truly is fascinating to watch a mind eat itself with cognitive dissonance and the lengths that a monstrously dishonest zealot like bob will go to try to make his case.
i love the way that those with no argument try to shift the debate to ad hominem and move the goal posts to who should be responding to what to duck the actual issue. then, they make a bad argument on a small part of the critique that has left them pantless, and then pretend they have responded.
seriously, what was all that self righteous babble at the top bob?
these are the actions of a fraud and a knave.
this is a horrifically dishonest tantrum that, once more is using terms inconsistently to make a dishonest case.
bob mistakes gross tax paid for net and then goes still further in demonstrating his innumeracy.
let’s take an example:
this is what bob said:
“, Perry treats governmental benefits as income that is subject to a tax rate of negative 100 percent”
if we look at quintile 1 and use his laughable claim of -100% income tax on transfers we get:
15,500 in market income + 9100 in transfers -500 in taxes paid on that income but bob leaves out a term (again). if the tax rate were negative 100% on the transfer, that would be a payment of ANOTHER $9100.
that would make full income 33, 200.
this is twice this has been explained to you bob.
ironically, you have just engaged in precisely the sort of niggling you objected to. you seem to have real issues about projecting your flaws onto others bob.
you seek to use a sideshow to distract from how weak you actual argument is. You waste 90% of your “piece” babbling and then try to claim, at the last minute after scarring 1000’s of innocent 1’s and 0’s for life by making them party to that mess, that you point stands.
yet you do not even address the point I raised.
btw, bob claims to be a tax lawyer in his bio. if this is so, then wow, i’d be very careful hiring him. this is pure buffoonery dressed up in the hot indignation of the shockingly ignorant.
that a “tax lawyer” cannot apply a tax rate is pretty amazing. tax rates are applied from the top of an income statement down, not from the bottom up.
but again, this whole point is not even dispositive to the debate. the point is simple and remains uncontested, much less refuted: the bottom 3 quintiles take out massively more from government than they pay, the 4th is basically break even and the 5th pretty much pays for everyone (unless you think $700 a year is a “fair share” of the US defense budget. we have 118mm households and spend $625bn on defense, which is $5300 per household. $700 does not seem like a “fair share” to me from folks averaging $83k in market income. the bottom 3 pay nothing on a net basis, so the top pay for those 3 + 87% of the 4th quintile.
you continue to rely upon the same assumptive fallacy that “fair” is defined like a Marxist instead of the way anyone else defines it. try out your idea of fairness at the grocery store. see how it goes over. just because someone earns more than you do does not make it “fair” for you to coercively take from them and make them pay for you.
at least since learning you purport to be a tax expert, we have settled one matter.
you wrote this:
“Why Perry looked to this ratio as a measure of tax progressivity is mystifying. Each developed country’s rate structure is available for all to see. Wouldn’t it be easier just to compare those rate structures? Or did that not get Perry the result he wanted?”
as a tax lawyer? really? how on earth could a tax lawyer say this with a straight face? there’s no way he could believe it. who would be better positioned to know that the headline rate is not what people pay and that deductions and definitions of taxable income vary by country? this can only be a predatory form of deliberate dishonesty.
so, at least we know for sure now that you are a liar.
we see it again in your claim that your central point was not refuted.
it was.
the whole point is that the transfers were so large that NO tax rate could cover them.
this is WHY they CANNOT pay their “fair share” and the top 20% pay for essentially everything.
again, you make my point for me.
you keep trying to focus on one part of the equation and ignore the other.
the fact that transfers are so large that there is no way for these people to be net payers IS THE POINT.
you know, the one you keep ducking?
you keep trying to define a net taking of $8600-12500 a year from the payments of the top 20% as a “fair share”.
just how would that work bob? can you point to ANY non coercive system for pricing goods and services that works like that?
no?
didn’t think so.
you failed to look up “coercion” like i asked, huh?
truly, it’s not a synonym for “fair”.
alternately, i will once more repeat my offer to you:
if paying 10$ for a dinner tab and then picking up $182 from the pile is “paying a fair share” i’d very much like to have dinner with you and use your system to divide the check. i’ll play 1st qunitle, you play 5th. i’ll pick the wine and you will be jailed if you do not pay for it.
will you feel like it was fair after dinner?
i doubt it very much bob.
you have, once more, just made the case for perry’s argument and not even realized it.
you have also proven yourself a liar, and demonstrated that you are perfectly willing to duck the meat of an argument to grandstand. hell, that was very nearly an appeal to authority fallacy citing yourself as the authority.
also, fwiw, i sent the comment to mark when i posted it. he did not write or edit it or “review it in advance”. he got it when you did.
you sure do like to make up facts to suit your dramatic but sad persecution fantasy.
i’m not sure what to say to a guy who gets his assertions disproven in clear english and math, but cannot understand that it has happened.
if someone cannot possibly pay for the house they bought no matter what % of their income they use for the mortgage so they take money from you to cover it and then accuse you of not paying your share and demand more, you’re ok with that?
that’s fair?
again, if so, let’s go in on a timeshare.
you keep assuming you premises that the transfers which are never paid for are “fair”.
man can you duck an issue bob.
i’m curious to see if it’s because you straight up do not understand the conversation or if it’s just that you are a liar and hypocrite.
I look forward to your response which will doubtless prove educational on that score.