Framing

Greg Mankiw, who is going to think I am picking on him though I am not, rewrites Ip's paraphrase in an article in the WSJ. I will not provide the Ip Quote which was truely wrong, but I will provide the Mankiw Rewrite:

From 2000 to 2004, the average tax rate for all taxpayers fell from 15.3% to 12.1%, representing 21% tax cut. The tax rate of the richest 1% fell from 27.5% to 23.5%, a 15% tax cut. For the bottom 50%, the tax rate fell from 4.6% to 3%, a 35% tax cut. As a result of these changes, the top 1% paid a larger share of the tax burden in 2004 than it did four years earlier, and the bottom 50 percent paid a smaller share.

A clear Statement is it not?--Not! It says much, and little. Greg fails to provide actual numbers on the Average Cost of the Household Budget for each Income group. He does not compute the real Tax Cut Savings of both Percentages (15% and 35%), or the ratios of 15%a/ACHa and 35%b/ACHb. This is the real computation of Household contribution to the Public Debt accumulated by the Tax Cuts. Greg Mankiw also did not provide information as to the Percentage of the Public Debt attributable to the Tax Cuts; which Liberals and Democrats perhaps rightly claim as future Taxes.

Simple honesty brings the admission that I also did not make the computations involved, but to provide Greg's overtly primitive calculations as adequate to understand this Tax process, also consists of artificial framing of the Problem; though Mankiw may possess the greater justification for his analysis. lgl