14/15 of the Lowest Per Capita States are Republican

[septimus]

I think there are demographic statistics (partly rural vs urban, but there’s probably more to it than that) which correlate with income, education, and party affiliation. These effects might lead to a correlation by state between education level and voting, but it may be intellectually dishonest to then pretend that people vote GOP because they’re stupid!!

In other words, the statistics in OP are valid, but it may be too simplistic to draw an anti-GOP message from them.

But that’s not a claim GOP defenders in this thread have made. Instead they’ve claimed, without reason or evidence, that the statistics are happenstance or otherwise invalid.

@Saint_Cad

Again, I did not claim that.
I merely presented an alternate hypothesis that met the OP’s rather incomplete data. Mine may not and probably is not a correct hypothesis …
Sorry for the confusion.

Sorry, Saint Cad. We could have saved a round of rejoinders if I’d recognized that your comment was a hypothetical strawman used in an indirect argument.

Here it is again:

@Saint_Cad

Typical Dem bullship argument. Either no one really understands how great Obama is or Republicans are idiots. If the Dems bothered to think about how people really think the answer is obvious and has nothing to do with political parties.

So you are really suprised that the Americans that are worst off vote for the other guy and those that are best off vote for the incumbant? If McCain had been elected in 2008 we would be having this exact same discussion about how the lowest per capita state incomes are Democrat and untoward_parable would have pointed out the highest per capita states were Republican.

In other words it has nothing to do with Obama/Romney or Dem/Pub but rather that people vote with their pocketbook and if they don’t feel their personal economy is where it should be they will always vote for the other guy a la Bush in 1992.

I’m afraid that I don’t see any of the words or emoticons that would have been give-aways that yours was intended as a phony strawman or hypothetical. Can you point to the phrase that should have tipped us off? Should we treat future posts by you as just facetious or ironical?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Acsenray

Good point.

What a goofy article.

Hmm … let’s consider a thought experiment. Let’s say state and local taxes were 60% and Federal taxes were also 60%. At this point, if the State and Local tax deductions were allowed, the effective tax rate would be 84%. Under Charles Lane’s formula, you could not claim the deduction for State and Local taxes and so the effective rate of taxes would be 120%, i.e. more than aggregate gross income.

I am not sure that there is a positive test for a relatively normative issue like “fairness”. However, if something is structurally unsound enough to result in absurd answers like taxes owed being higher than the gross income, it comes pretty close to QED.

“If we don’t allow state income tax deduction, people could theoretically pay 120% of their gross income in taxes. Therefore, we must keep it.” You could argue almost anything away with that logic. “If we have speed limits, somebody who can’t get an ambulance might not make it to the hospital in time. Therefore, we must get rid of them.”