Tim Noah of Slate notes this amazing exchange. Question: Is Karl Rove really so totally uniformed about the consequences of the policies he advocates? Or is he just betting--cynically and correctly--that if God had not wanted the press corps to be sheared, he would not have made them sheep. The most interesting thing (to me) about Dana Milbank's Washington Post story is the implication that none of the reporters meeting with Rove knew enough about economic policy and had the guts to challenge him on the spot.
Posted by DeLong at January 31, 2003 06:15 PM | Trackbackwashingtonpost.com: 'Background' Checks: ...In a meeting with reporters last week, Bush political adviser Karl Rove said Bush's plan to abolish the dividend tax was evidence that he's "a populist. Give him a choice between Wall Street and Main Street and he'll choose Main Street every time."
As evidence, Rove argued that "45 percent of all of the dividend income goes to people with $50,000-or-less incomes, family incomes. Nearly three-quarters of it goes to families with $100,000 or less family income."
Not exactly. It is true that 43.8 percent of tax returns with dividend income are from households with less than $50,000 in income and 73.8 percent of such returns are from households with less than $100,000. But that doesn't mean the little guy earning less than $50,000 gets "45 percent of all the income" or that the Main Street earners below $100,000 get "three-quarters" of dividend income.
In fact, those earning less than $50,000 get 14.7 percent of dividend income, and those earning less than $100,000 get 32.7 percent.... The former would get 6.8 percent of the benefit of Bush's dividend plan, while the latter would get 20.9 percent.
Well, *there's* the problem. The Bush Administration is simply incapable of differentiating between numbers of returns and dollars. A quick remedial session on units and they should be up to running the world's largest economy in no time.
Posted by: Charles Utwater II on January 31, 2003 10:06 PMAnyone listening to Rove's remarks with ANY instinct for numbers and the policies involved would immediately have realized that there was something just flat wrong about Rove's account.
I mean, we're not talking about high mathematics here -- anyone who understood fractions and percentages should have understood that there was something highly bogus.
What a press corps. No wonder Paul Krugman seems like a man from Mars to them.
Posted by: frankly0 on February 1, 2003 09:01 AMFor good commentary along these lines, I've found
http://www.dailyhowler.com
to be good.
Best,
Do those 6.8% and 20.9% take into account tax sheltered accounts, where the dividend income would be taxed on withdrawal?
Posted by: Adam on February 1, 2003 09:53 AMReally an astonishing exchange, but I have been hearing the same on PBS news discussions. The failure of so many reporters to do the least homework and so to ask incisive questions when it comes to coverage of economic issues is awful.
The set of budget proposals from the Administration if passed will have a mimimal short term stimulus effect and leave a structural deficit that will seriously threaten social security and medicare unless some miracle of growth acceleration might occur.
My sense is that arch conservative economists are indeed trying to undo New Deal and Great Society programs, but are trying to mask that. Though unemployment benefits were extended by Congress, Tom Delay regetted that the extention would "increase" unemployment. Social security in turn will cause people to rely on the government to save for them. Medicare, oh well. But, such ideology must be politically masked.
Posted by: anne on February 2, 2003 11:26 AM