Steal this argument
I found one of the best explanations I’ve ever read on why Democratic presidents are better than Republican presidents in Economist’s View completely by accident this week. After taking blows on the chin in countless conservative/liberal arguments, I want to steal this argument:
When a Republican president is in power, people at the top of the income distribution experience much larger real income gains than those at the bottom–a difference of 1.5 percent per year going from the bottom to the top quintile in the income distribution. The situation is reversed when a Democrat is in power: those who benefit the most are the lower income groups. If you are in the bottom quintile, the difference between having a Democratic or a Republican president in office is an income gain (or loss) of more than 2 percent per year! Strikingly, compared to Republicans, Democratic presidents generate higher income gains for all income groups (although the difference is statistically significant only for lower income groups).
This article is a gift that keeps on giving:
Bartels shows in his book that this difference is not a statistical artifact or a fluke. It is not the result of Democrats coming to power during better economic times, or of Republicans reining in the unsustainable excesses of Democratic administrations they replace. (It turns out that the same pattern prevails even when a Republican president is succeeded by another Republican.) These numbers are real and they are the outcome of partisan differences in policy.
Read the entire thing to feel great about being a Democrat.
Great find. Can’t say that I’m surprised though.
Wow. Great post.
Thanks. I may add that Economist’s View blog to my list of regular reading.
This courtesy of the WFP. Here’s a chart of the effective tax rate in New York State from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (via the Fiscal Policy Institute) that illustrates this point:
http://img702.mytextgraphics.com/photolava/2008/04/08/elmosalterlogic-4a42am1vb.jpeg
The flaw in the budget debate – and it’s a serious one – was on the revenue side. New York continues to have not just high taxes, but highly unfair taxes.
The wealthier you are in New York State, the less you pay in taxes as a percentage of your income. Look at all the taxes a person pays – income, payroll, sales, property, capital gains – and you find that the middle class and working class pay higher percentages of their overall income in taxes than the wealthy.