Inconvenient Facts, Part 2

Paul Krugman is apparently unaware of the saying about a shovel not being the ideal tool to use for getting out of a hole. First yesterday he tried to divert us from the Wall Street Journal's discussion of rich people’s contribution to the federal deficit through income tax payments by bringing in rates of change and what they pay in “other taxes,” and then he goes back to discussing combined income tax and payroll tax and provides a chart showing that by income category.

Except that the context in which the discussion was raised was the federal deficit, and how the rich should contribute more toward reducing that deficit by having their income tax raised because it is claimed that they “pay less income tax than their secretaries do.”

Paul Krugman is using the Republican tactic of changing the subject whenever you are losing the argument. What the rich pay in payroll taxes, or state and local taxes, has nothing to do with the federal deficit, nothing to do with how the rich contribute to the federal deficit in the form of income taxation, and nothing to do with the present discussion.

I’m not opposed to raising the tax rate, I just dislike sloppy argument.