August 19, 2004

silhouette3.JPG From the desk of Jane Galt:

Blegging

Hey, liberal readers! A while back, there was a meme going around the liberal blogs to the effect that a ridiculous proportion of Americans think they are in the top 10% of income earners. Can someone point me to either an entry about it, or the poll itself? I'm on a tight deadline, and my undying gratitude goes out to the person who finds it for me.

Posted by Jane Galt at August 19, 2004 3:08 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
Comments
Posted by: Dr. Manhattan on August 19, 2004 3:33 PM

Try here, here and here (subscription-only).

Posted by: dsquared on August 19, 2004 4:50 PM

I will provide the cite the very minute that you convince me that you're only going to quote this statistic in a context which makes it clear that it was obviously (and self-evidently) a piece of crap from the start.

What happened is that there was a tax proposal which would only (or chiefly) benefit a particular set of high earners, about 1% of the population. Someone asked "Do you think this proposal will benefit you?" to a sample of people. Nine per cent said "yes". This was then reported as "10% think they're in the top 1%", rather than "8% don't understand this tax proposal properly". It was stupid from the start.

I seem to remember making about a million anguished posts to comments on left-wing blogs pointing out that any survey which claimed that 22.5 million people held wildly delusional views about matters which were right in front of their noses, was most likely a bad survey. But google reveals that I didn't. Sorry, internet.

Posted by: Andy Freeman on August 19, 2004 10:11 PM

> Someone asked "Do you think this proposal will benefit you?" to a sample of people. Nine per cent said "yes". This was then reported as "10% think they're in the top 1%", rather than "8% don't understand this tax proposal properly".

Or, maybe they think that they'll be in the top 1%.

Or, maybe they think that they'll benefit more from money being in rich people's hands than they will from said money being in govt hands? (I've never gotten a job from a poor person. Lileks points out that the money he got from a particular rate change paid for a lot of Minnesota labor - I'll bet said workers think that they benefitted directly.)

Posted by: Anthony on August 20, 2004 2:08 AM

Anyone driving on California's freeways is familiar with the fact that over half of all drivers think they're driving faster than 75% of all other drivers. (Or that they have the right to get in the way of those faster than themselves.)

Posted by: Richard on August 22, 2004 3:52 AM

Here's a similar type statistic.

"79% of Baby Boomers think their faces look younger than their peers."

Louis Roper poll of Americans aged 30-50, June 1996.

Posted by: dsquared on August 22, 2004 2:32 PM

That actually could be true, if there was a small group of very gregarious baby boomers with very old faces.

Posted by: don callaway on August 23, 2004 8:55 AM

Richard, thats funny. I was just saying the other day that I look better than 79% of my peers. LMAO!

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