David,
Nice of you to join the fray, once again. It speaks well of you.
You said (of me):
“The accurate numbers I reported are carefully presented in context, citing sources and limitations, contrary to the anonymous Engram, on whom you rely and whose own report is rife with faulty assumptions, errors, conflating of issues.”
I don’t cite my sources? Actually, I link directly to my source so that any reader who doubts what I have to say can very easily perform the analyses for himself or herself. I realize that you can’t do that in an article for the New York Times (most readers are not interested in that level of detail), but if you plan to continue writing articles about analyses that you perform yourself, I recommend that you create a corresponding web site that reviews the details of your analysis and links to the sources (so readers don’t have to spend hours trying to figure out the exact data set you used and the exact calculations you performed). You imply that you make it very easy for interested readers to check your work, but, in truth, it is exasperating (as I have learned from experience). I am not confident that you are qualified to perform the analyses you report to the world — often without even clearly indicating that you, yourself, performed the analysis. Perhaps you are, but making all of the details more readily accessible would help to establish that fact.
And I wonder how my own analyses are misleading. Is it misleading to draw a distinction between pre-tax and after-tax income? Is it misleading to emphasize all sources of income? Is it misleading to use the income statistics provided by the Tax Policy Center? I have searched hard for the best source of data, and that’s the best source I have found. If the raw IRS data offer a more accurate view, I’d be interested in knowing why.
I’m not really on a mission to prove a particular point of view. I’m on a mission to find the truth, and that starts with finding the best source of data. If my data source is questionable, I’d like to know, so if you have any information about that, please present it. It really looks to me as if the Tax Policy Center has worked hard to get the income information assembled in proper fashion. I detect no agenda in their work (even though I believe the associated think tanks lean to the left), and I did nothing more than plot up what they reported (not what I, myself, calculated). Yet you imply that you are accurate and that I am misleading. I am genuinely interested in knowing how it is misleading to simply report in a chart the results of an income analysis performed by the Tax Policy Center.
