Let's talk about facts this election - Part I - Taxes

That would be a lot easier to read if it had a red and blue bar, side by side, for each income level.

Highest Next .... Third
B
B B Tax More
B B
B B
-----------------------------B------No-Change---
R R R
R R R Tax Cut
R

Hey, ASCII is hard. But seriously, that color bar chart up there needs serious Tufte attention.

Arrgh. Careful alignment, mangled by the blog software. Well, you get the idea.

Why the \w38475p97 does SOFTWARE have problems using white space on a page?

Five hundred years since Gutenberg and these nitwits never learned a thing, they're still saving parchment by squeezing every letter closer.

Hank: for various historical reasons, not really connected to typesetting, the HTML standard defaults to ignoring excess whitespace - not least of which reasons being non-monospace fonts. If you want it lined up a certain way, you just use the appropriate tags to indicated whitespace is important.

As for the charts: Interesting, though I'm a bit surprised that there's still a net loss in tax income (for the govt) with Obama's plan. Aside from good ol' boy stuff, I still wonder WHY the republicans continue to try to drop the taxes on the rich the most..

One way to look at it is that McCain is going to cut everyone's taxes, in proportion to their income and Obama wants to increase taxes on the most wealthy and cut them for the least wealthy. Without information about what is currently individually paid by these income groups, it is difficult to tell the actual effect of either of these plans.

One way to look at it is that McCain is going to cut everyone's taxes, in proportion to their income

Wrong! McCain is cutting a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of taxes from the wealthy. Thus under McCain's plan if you earn 1 million you get a 3.4% tax cut while if you earn 50,000 you get a 0.7% tax cut. If McCain cuts taxes equally, he would cut everyone's taxes by the same percentage. Instead he give a whole lot to the rich and peanuts to the working class. Just more of the same types of policies we've endured over the last 8 years.

I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.
--John McCain, May 2001

It looks like a further morphing of McCain into George W. Bush. He's mailing to his list of campaign contributors, and now he's supporting the tax cuts ... It looks political to me. It runs counter to his whole past behavior. He's got to appeal to the base of the party. I don't think there is a Republican in the land who can get the nomination who voted against the tax cuts
--Larry Hunter, Republican Strategist, February 2006, link

Hey Joel, quick question. Is your household taxable income above or below $111,646? Just trying to see if you are a dumbfuck or not...

Like I said, without information about what individuals are currently paying, how can you tell what this really means? We do have a progressive tax, it would seem that it works both ways.

Maybe not, but it seemed like a reasonable question.

obama!