RSS Feed MenuBruce Bartlett crunches the numbers on our FrumForum tea party survey, and discovers a view of the world at variance with some basic economic realities.
Tuesday’s Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president.
Read it all in Bruce Bartlett’s column in today’s Forbes.com.
caribousteaks // Mar 22, 2010 at 11:36 am
The ANWR question is entirely misleading and loaded. To ask someone about something that is physically impossible on a statistic that is an outright scientific guess (not fact) is plain wrong. The reality is no one knows how much oil is in ANWR. The USGS projections are based on 2D seismic work in 1983-84 which delivered “crapy” data as one geologist working on the survey said at the time. Seismic work is educated guess work at very best, no one knows the reality until one drills. Take Prudhoe Bay for example 50 miles away from ANWR. Initial USGS estimates were 4-9bbls. of oil. Nutters like Frum turned this into “269 days of oil” nonsense similar to the survey. Well 30 years later we have pumped 16 billion barrels of oil from that field and counting. How disingenuous and deceitful Frums question comes up in similarity to those nonsense arguments of old. But wait, lets get back to that USGS ANWR Survey….reading the fine print you will find they put a 37% recovery rate cap on the 2D data used and illuminated small plays below “non-commercial” size thought at the time. Todays recovery rates are upward of 60% and every single one of the plays in the 10-02 could easily be recovered with modern drilling techniques. The USGS numbers game quickly falls completely apart. Then there is the problem of drilling all that oil all at once, airlifting it 3000 miles away to the lower 48 , all at once, and burning it ALL AT ONCE as such a “how long with it last” question implies! yea right! good one, try that with your daughter or son and see how they laugh at you. Such loaded surveys are only created to egg out a pre-concieved response of someone with an agenda. Frum fits that perfectly.