Posted on 07/30/2012 9:12:10 AM PDT by jazusamo
It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loud enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and nowhere more so than during election years.
Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of "the rich" is going up, while other people's incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly.
But the government's own Congressional Budget Office has just published a report whose statistics flatly contradict this claim. The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5 percent or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18 percent. For households in the "top one percent" that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36 percent in those same years.
Why are these data so different from other data that are widely cited, showing the top brackets improving their positions more so than anyone else?
The answer is that the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
What else is to be expected from the party that brought us the biggest FRAUD in American history.
Does anyone else find it interesting that the rich are getting richer when the general public is spending less and less? How does this work?
Now, I’d vote for Sowell for prez in a heartbeat.
As for the Obamadork...as Thumper’s mother said, “If you cannot say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”
Oh, what the heck...the Obamadork is a cretinistic idiot that should shove his head up his smelly Obama, take a deep breath, and hold it.
Thanks for the ping
What are you writing about? If the CBO says the most highly compensated are earning less, then they are not getting richer than those in less-well-compensated tranches lower down. So they aren’t getting richer.
So what are you typing about?
Thanks for the ping jaz. He’s giving them “H” again. chuckle. I love this guy. He’s great.
Amen! I love it when he calls out Zer0 and his cronies as liars.
Exactly...The third paragraph is pretty clear to me.
Exactly my point. In other words, how can the rich get richer, if no one is spending their money to purchase their products? Guess I didn’t make myself clear.
Which is it?
Which one? I can think of at least 3 without giving it any thought.
Mark
Oh, I see now. You were asking how anyone could try to make that case given the data.
Well, as we see in so many cases, facts are dispensible when a Democrat is speaking and it is racist/sexist/homophobic for anyone to even question what possible authority they might be relying upon.
the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers.I don’t know if anyone else brought up the idea that the “poor quintile” is actually loaded with young people just starting out, and the “rich” quintile is loaded with mature people having a career year before Sowell did - but I don’t much care. Sowell is the one who pointed it out to me, and and as far as I’m concerned Sowell deserves the Nobel Prize.Most other data, including census data, are based on compiling statistics in a succession of time periods, without the ability to tell if the actual people in each income bracket are the same from one time period to the next. The turnover of people is substantial in all brackets — and is huge in the top one percent. Most people in that bracket are there for only one year in a decade.
All sorts of statements are made in politics and in the media as if that "top one percent" is an enduring class of people, rather than an ever-changing collection of individuals who have a spike in their income in a particular year, for one reason or another. Turnover in other income brackets is also substantial.
"These transferrers are in both government and private social welfare institutions. They have every incentive to promote dependency, from which they benefit both professionally and psychically, and to imagine that they are creating social benefits."
They get paid, and get to feel good about "helping the little guy."
I saw an interview of Dr. Sowell on his book "The Thomas Sowell Reader" where he was asked, if he had a single piece of advice for "Obama." Tom's advice?: "Resign."
I know who I'd rather have a beer with. . .
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