Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ross Douthat Boy Genius

So the other day Douthat, and no I still don't know how it is pronounced, made a very large error on median income reporting it at 94k. In his correction he linked to Infoplease which gives the median income from 2006 as 67k. Quite a bit has happened between 06 and 11. Plus, did you know that the the government collects all manner of statistics? If you go to the Census bureau you find the median income for the whole of the US in '09 is 50k. Douthat argues that the 94k figure represents the CBO's best guess on total compensation  "which includes employment-based health insurance and the employer’s share of payroll taxes.” Oddly enough in the correction he doesn't print the number nor yet does it seem to have occurred to him to use his tax-payer provided actual numbers.

1 comment:

  1. Almost every column Douchehat writes starts with some sort of incorrect assumption or made up fact and then gets a pretty much wrong conclusion that matches some conservative belief.

    Kind of like the entire conservative movement

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