Fact-checkers
are at it again. They are calling it a myth that ObamaCare is the
biggest tax increase in history. But let's see how these great
fact-checkers work.
Bloomberg Businessweek has an article titled "Why Obamacare's Tax Increase Isn't the Biggest Ever." Its source: "a nice chart from Ezra Klein." Let's go over to Ezra.
Ezra Klein got that nice chart from Austin Frakt, an economist who blogs. And Austin Frakt got the data for that chart from Kevin Drum. And Kevin Drum is a writer for (drum roll) the left-wing magazine Mother Jones. His tone and objectivity come across in this sentence: "This is so stupid it hurts."
So far we have Bloomberg and the Washington Post simply repeating something that Mother Jones originated.
But at least Drum was using something almost credible: a working paper from the Treasury department. The paper Drum cited provided only tables of results, with no explanation of methodology. As it turns out, the description of that methodology is given in a previous version of that working paper, here.
Now we are starting to get somewhere. The author of that Treasury paper, Jerry Tempalski, got his numbers from Treasury estimates done years ago, when the legislation occurred. But let me provide an excerpt from Tempalski's paper.
Bloomberg Businessweek has an article titled "Why Obamacare's Tax Increase Isn't the Biggest Ever." Its source: "a nice chart from Ezra Klein." Let's go over to Ezra.
Ezra Klein got that nice chart from Austin Frakt, an economist who blogs. And Austin Frakt got the data for that chart from Kevin Drum. And Kevin Drum is a writer for (drum roll) the left-wing magazine Mother Jones. His tone and objectivity come across in this sentence: "This is so stupid it hurts."
So far we have Bloomberg and the Washington Post simply repeating something that Mother Jones originated.
But at least Drum was using something almost credible: a working paper from the Treasury department. The paper Drum cited provided only tables of results, with no explanation of methodology. As it turns out, the description of that methodology is given in a previous version of that working paper, here.
Now we are starting to get somewhere. The author of that Treasury paper, Jerry Tempalski, got his numbers from Treasury estimates done years ago, when the legislation occurred. But let me provide an excerpt from Tempalski's paper.
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