Saturday, December 11, 2004

Winning Through Liberal Statistics

I haven't been reading PoliPundit much at all since the election. I just took a look at their Sitemeter statistics, and saw that their October traffic was 1.7 million visits, but, at their current run rate (and ignoring the inevitable Christmas/New Years slow down), December will bring them to 600,000. So, they will have lost about 65% of their traffic. Me, I will have only lost 50%!

But I can do them even better, if I use the sort of analysis that liberals use for assessing tax policy. They are down 35,000 readers a day. I'm down only about 30. I am absolutely, positively, kicking their ass by three orders of magnitude!! I'm doing better than them by more than a one-thousand to one ratio!!!

<karaoke>
Oh, Weeeeeeeee are the champiuuuns, my frieennnd....

Weeeeeee'll keep on fiiiiighting till the ennnnnd....
</karaoke>

If my reference to tax policy is obscure, here's how liberals look at it. Hypothetically (these aren't exact figures, but the logic holds), due to evil Rethuglican income tax cuts, let's say a guy making $500,000 gets 10 percentage points taken off his 40% overall federal tax rate, for a savings of $50,000. A guy making $30,000 gets his 20% overall rate cut in half, for a savings of $3,000. So the evil rich guy got 25% cut out of his tax bill, while the other guy got twice as good a deal, since he got a 50% cut. And now the overall tax rate schedule is even more progressive than it was, since Mr. Moneybags is paying a rate that is 3 times higher than the rate paid by Mr. Exploited, instead of a rate that is "only" twice as high.

But don't you see the evil?!?

The spawn-of-hell rich guy got 17 times more money back!!!! This is an OUTRAGE!!

Uh, huh. Nevermind that he is paying 50 times more in taxes! Well, what is the essence of this kind of logic (reliably spouted by the "evil corporate media" every time a tax-relief bill comes to Congress)? It seems that for particular classes of people, taxes should never, ever do anything but rise. Taken to its logical conclusion, this idea of fairness must require all incomes to be the same. After all, "From each according to his ability", right? Scratch a lefty, and you may well find a commie. I think a majority in this country knows this. The message is getting out loud and clear. This is why they lose.

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