The ProPublica Piece is Dumb; Biden’s Proposed Taxes on the Wealthy are Smart
The case for taxing the wealthy doesn't require misleading bullshit.
The fact that our tax code lets wealthy people -- including pornographically-wealthy people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos -- pay shockingly-low taxes is a problem. Another things that’s a problem is biased news outlets using garbage social science to basically lie to people. So you can see why I’m conflicted about the ProPublica piece on billionaire taxation that’s everywhere on lefty Twitter this week.
Let me start with the ProPublica piece. The piece is, in my opinion, awfully damned impressed with itself. It has all the trappings of Big Important Journalism That Should Win Us A Pulitzer, Please, including a “snowfall” layout, dots representing quantities (people love dots!), and the obligatory black-and-white, eyes-scratched-out banner photo that tells you: “These people are baaaaaaaaaad!” It promises to “reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax” and “demolish the cornerstone myth” - demolish it, they declare that their own article DEMOLISHES THE MYTH - that every American pays their fair share. They then completely fail to do either of those things, even though an honest analysis of our tax system would do them.
I don’t think ProPublica skipped an honest analysis of billionaire taxation because they’re lazy jerks; I think they skipped it because it can’t really be done until those billionaires die. And, since ProPublica wasn’t willing to wait a few decades or go on a mass killing spree, they invented a metric they call the “true tax rate”. The true tax rate is simple; it’s:
What’s silly about this is that it allows ProPublica to pick time frames - and boy oh boy do they cherry-pick timeframes! - in which most of the taxes in question didn’t come due. They then pee their pants saying “person X didn’t pay any taxes during this timeframe!” even though taxes will come due on that money1, just not during the time ProPublica chose to look at. This isn’t “avoiding taxes”; it’s “not paying taxes yet.” It’s also a publication being willfully ignorant in order to engineer a narrative.