Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Haines on CNBC

In response to:
Haines: The Real Impact of Marginal Tax Hikes on Hiring

I posted the following in the comments section:

This is the problem of what we statisticians call a "control case". You quote all these examples where job growth occurred in the presence of higher taxation, but that does not mean taxation did not negatively affect job growth. The missing question is 'what would have job growth been without the additional tax increase?" Surely, there were a bunch of things that were favorably affecting job growth. Short duration wars stimulate growth in manufacturing industries, naturally, and in the 1990s we embarked on the 4th revolution, namely, the computer revolution. Furthermore, our population dynamics has been changing with the baby boomers coming of age, the arrival of the single family household, and a changing of lifestyles from saving to consumption. There are a million variables not being controlled for in your examples. To compare taxation of different times in a vacuum will help you get your socialist ideals of raising taxes on high income earners across to other people who want to believe in it at all costs and need examples to 'prove their point', but it doesn't fool people who work with data.

"I just don’t see the correlation between raising taxes and job growth"
One must remember the saying "correlation does not imply causation."

It's absurd to think that raising taxes of any kind will promote economic activity and lead to job growth.

I have watched you on squawk box or whatever show you are on and it is clear from interviews and commentary that you want to raise taxes on the rich no matter what. Don't pretend that you are using the data to come to your conclusions.

Your last paragraph is a caveat to defend your article, but I think the intend is an implication that higher taxes do not negatively affect growth, because otherwise this article would not have even been written. Essentially with this paragraph, you are saying you don't know what to think. I applaud you for addressing comments though.

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