Republicans take it on faith that lower taxes create jobs, and keep jobs. Just cut more money from someone on the low end of the scale, or cut a few hundred thousand public workers so you can lower taxes, and it will create jobs. If we can just transfer more money into the pockets of the bankers, they will hire more of us. Workers shouldn't work harder so they can have a bigger reward, workers should work hard so we can make more money for the job creators. Public education and infrastructure should be shouldered by the workers, not the job creators. They need to create more jobs!
Well, enough preaching. Just look at the numbers. The following graph shows the relationship between a states taxing rank, and its unemployment. If conservative dogma and fiscal fundamentalism holds true, we should see a increasing trend line from left to right. Conservatives will tell you on faith, that as states tax more, their unemployment will go up. States that tax less, will have lower unemployment. Just take a look at the chart. As the states increase in taxes, from left to right, are the unemployment increasing along with them?
State Taxes (Least to Greatest) vs. State Unemployment
Analysis and the data table after the break.
Crossposted at MNProgressiveProject
Citations:
Partisan data by state
Ranking of the most "tax friendly" states.
Most recent unemployment statistics.
In layman's terms, as taxes increase, sometimes unemployment is high, sometimes it is low. There is almost no discernible relationship between taxes and unemployment.
Warning, technical data ahead:
Mathematically, you can try and model the relationship with a regression line. I conducted both a median-median, and least squares regression line. This line produces a correlation coefficient called R^2. R^2 will tell you, how close a prediction you can make, based on the data.
A correlation coefficient of 1 is perfect. As taxes go up, so does unemployment. I could predict it perfectly, every time.
A correlation coefficient of -1 is a perfect inverse relationship. This would mean, as taxes go up, unemployment actually goes down. I could also predict this perfectly.
So, the close we are to 1, or -1, the more confident we are in a relationship. The R^2 value for taxes vs. unemployment is .00061. There is absolutely no correlation between taxing more and unemployment being higher. If there is no correlation, than there is certainly no causation.