Some weeks ago, Vox launched a calculator that claimed to “[tell] you how each presidential candidate's tax plan affects you”. People began playing with it and articles were written based on its results.
A funny thing about that calculator. It tells you that Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have better plans than Hillary or Bernie by huge margins.
It also tells you that a person making $15K/year would pay $1,630 extra per year under Bernie’s plan.
Yes, Vox tells you that under his plan, poor (and middle class) people are going to be decimated.
Huh? Should I question my progressive values and go over to the dark side? Is there something I’m missing?
Yes, there is something missing. It turns out Vox has a candidate tax plan calculator that is “wildly misleading“ and counts only the tax burden and not the benefits. It gives us the Republican perspective of “there is no good government” rather than telling us the expected effects of candidate plans.
The Nation (linked above) is one of many sources debunking the Vox calculator. Full disclosure: The Nation has endorsed Bernie. Other debunkings can be found at datatician.com, fair.org, huffingtonpost.com, and deanbaker.
The Vox calculator produces total “tax liability”, not what effect it will have on my paycheck or what I’ll have at the end of the day.
Vox published an article titled “This simple calculator tells you how each presidential candidate’s tax plan affects you.” It couldn’t be more manipulative
Someone at Vox forgot to include the benefits of Democratic policies. They counted only the tax and none of the reduced costs.
Vox’s calculator, despite its catchy headline, does not show how your overall economic situation might change under each candidate’s policy agenda.
They go on to raise valid concerns about a Vox analysis that shows Cruz and Trump producing better results than either Hillary or Bernie.
[the effect of] tax dollars used to finance shared goods like healthcare, education, roads, Social Security, and so forth—is completely left out.
They forgot to include the benefits of each plan. For example, lower medical and education costs.
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, under Sanders’s proposals, many Americans will not only see their take-home pay increase, they’ll also spend less of it on things like prescriptions and student loans.
The Vox employee “tax liability” estimate includes employer payroll taxes.
What it presents is a number Vox calls “your tax liability,” which includes things you would never think of as part of your tax bill—like the payroll taxes your employer pays on your wage or the tax you pay on a bottle of wine.
Vox takes the “taxes!” approach by ignoring the benefits that well spent taxes can produce.
While Vox’s presentation is misleading, it’s certainly true that Sanders proposes tax increases...
But this doesn’t tell us anything useful about how much money we will actually have at the end of the day.
Please, can we have an honest dialogue about the costs and benefits of Democratic and progressive policies?
Vox, and by extension Markos, should hang their heads in shame. They should fix the failed calculator and issue a mea culpa for playing the Republican’s “taxes=bad” game. Finally, any article written based on the right-wing analysis of the Vox calculator should be corrected to reflect an honest assessment of our candidates’ policies.
Let’s put good public policy ahead of political gamesmanship.
How about we start with a realistic analysis of how candidate policies will affect the people of America?