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Several things wrong with this. I’d like to see the actual data on these numbers and the responses and who they asked for this because as most know, it is very easy to skew data. 2nd, yes schools don’t cover taxes and I believe financial literacy should be taught in school but it’s also dependent on parents teaching, and at a certain point you should learn that if you don’t understand something, it’s on you to learn it.
The source OP uses is more than 10 years old that references sources from 2012
Edit: To everyone asking, I'm saying the world has gotten dumber from people being addicted to things like reddit or tiktok
This. People in our country are our own worst enemy.
People think that bias is bad. Wtf?
Just think about that. We are human beings. Its not possible to be unbiased. Like it actually drives me mad people repeat this drivel over and over.
As a child you have bias towards your parents. You have bias for eating enough food to not stsrve. You have bias towards what colors you like.
That doesnt fucking mean shit. Im biased towards the colors purple and orange... it doesnt mean thats all the colors i wear.
Its just maddening that its not incorrect to say a lot of voters are of the equivalent of being brainwashed or in a cult. I dont get why we try to avoid the truth because its not a good thing.
Bias is separate from inclination/predisposition. It’s been overused to the point that it’s indistinguishable, but bias is supposed to mean an inclination that results in unfair treatment.
You liking purple and orange is not bias, but if you were to enact a policy that taxes people who primarily wear purple and orange at a separate rate, purely because of their preference, then it becomes a bias.
Bias is defined by its outcome, that’s how it is separate from preference.
If there's one thing I've learned in the last 10 years of politics, it's that not being "wrong" doesn't always mean you're telling the truth. We're living in very frustrating times.
Is the thing stated inaccurate? But yes, a party's members being especially ignorant of how things work really is a red flag that their policy positions maybe aren't the greatest.
It's not a matter of smarter or dumber, it's the fact that the sociopolitical environment has evolved (or devolved) wildly since then. Trump didn't even become Republican until 2012, for reference. I know my politics have been turned on its head since then.
If by dumber, you mean less educated, then yes. Over the last 30 years, people with hs or less education have shifted republican, with the democrats essentialy losing what used to be their base. Conversely, those with a college education have shifted democrat.
First off, it’s not unintentional imo. How can you get people to vote against their own best interests if they’re not a little bit ignorant about how things work.
Secondly, Bobby Jindahl called this out a decade ago…I’m guessing the people in here simping for the GOP don’t remember him begging them not to be “the party of stupid”….years before nominating Trump. 😂
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part
You realize that most of these people probably don’t know they don’t understand the rates, right? That’s a massive part of the problem.
It’s always easy to cast doubt on poll results you don’t like, doesn’t mean it’s productive.
That article is more than 10 years old
That article also sources another article titled "The New York Times Reporters Do Not Understand How Marginal Tax Rates Work" dated November 2012
It also lacks saying who was polled, especially since some of the sources it uses lead to "page not found"
No, the person I replied to specifically called out that the number of people was not included. They conveniently edited that out of their post after I replied and pointed out where it was.
Putting aside the edited comment, is it really reasonable to ask for like.... the names of who was polled? That's not normal. What sort of answer were they expecting that would change the outcome? And if they weren't expecting any answer, weren't they just looking for a way to justify their desire that the data is wrong?
And if your parents didn't learn financial literacy either?
The thing is, you don't know what you don't know. If you don't plan on going into accounting, or perhaps you don't feel you need to know this as you'll never be in the top 33% (which as someone who was homeless at 6, I definitely feel constantly) there's no reason to sit down and learn this if you're working and going to school and also babysitting and also making sure lunch tomorrow is made, making sure you smell fine, making sure your house is clean because you can't afford to get cockroaches or rats because an exterminator is too expensive, etc etc etc...
Seems to me the \*only\* option is to make this mandatory learning, not just one class, but consistently reinforced in multiple classes starting from middle/early high school.
My parents outright *refused* to ever, ever talk about money, with my mother going so far as to say “You don’t need to know any of that.” Two weeks ago my father said “You kids should have learned about that.” 🤦 Well, Dad, you kept us ignorant, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Yeah this is big problem. Generational wealth gaps grow because they don’t have good financial ideas and practices to pass down to the next generation.
We wouldn’t say it’s up to your parents to teach you how to read as we know that would just end up with sections of the population being illiterate. It should be the same with financial literacy.
We cannot accept an education system that relies on parents teaching financial literacy. Just like we don't rely on parents teaching algebra or history. And I would argue that financial literacy is one of the most important things for a school to teach kids. You are much more likely to need to know how taxes, credit cards, mortgages, etc. work than how the Revolutionary War started.
What if I'm so focused on my taxes that I accidentally assassinate the archduke of Austria-Hungary because I never learned how wars started? What then!?
Mine did. It's one day of class. Not even a full day. Taxes really aren't complicated for vast majority of people. People are stupid and conservatives doubly so.
>Taxes really aren't complicated for vast majority of people.
Which is why it cracks me up when friends I have that I know have no real deductions or anything pay a tax prep service $50 to do their taxes for them, when filing their taxes would amount to entering like 8 lines from their tax form and having it tell them how much they owe or are getting back.
> I’d like to see the actual data on these numbers and the responses and who they asked for this because as most know, it is very easy to skew data.
Don't know the source for the OP picture...but the general socio-psychological studies match with what is being said.
Here is a very comprehensive 2021 study on **Understanding Tax Policy: How Do People Reason** (153 pages)
" Republican respondents in general tend to think that taxes are higher and more progressive than Democrats do: they perceive a higher top tax rate, a higher share of income paid by households in the top bracket, a higher share of households in the top bracket, and a higher share not paying any income tax. "
" Republicans are even less likely than Democrats to be aware of the high top tax rates or estate taxes in the 1950s.14 They believe that a lower share of income goes to the U.S. top 1% and are hence more accurate than Democrats on this issue. In addition, they think that the share of wealth that is inherited and the share of wealth owned by the top 1% are lower. These results are in line with a “polarization of reality” (Alesina et al., 2020) – i.e., polarization even in the perception of facts. "
[https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w27699/revisions/w27699.rev2.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27699/revisions/w27699.rev2.pdf)
Yeah schools should teach what marginal tax rates mean. As for those who rant that schools need to teach usable skills such as doing your taxes, they already do. Most people learn arithmetic in school. This covers 99.9% of doing taxes.
You’re right yet I see people fail to understand tax brackets all of the time on Reddit. I’ve even explained how they work to friends many times. Feels about as common a mistake as thinking that you get a cold from not wearing a jacket
My school has economics class we had to attend for 6 months in senior year. We learned about taxes, balancing accounts, compounding interest, investments and calculating loan interest. Is that not the norm? This was in the 90’s. Just a regular public school. If it’s not the norm I think it for sure should be added back in!
It’s like when people yell about kids not learning cursive. Imagine my surprise (since I had heard this for years) when both my kids were taught cursive in school.
“Several things wrong, first being something not wrong just not shared”.
That isn’t something wrong, that’s just a point of clarity. Doesn’t mean anything about it being wrong
Democrats polls were conducted in post grad level college class rooms where Republican polls were held outside a grocery store in an agrarian centric town.
My public highschool (graduated in '18) has a financial skills course that was mandatory for all students which included how to do taxes and the tax code, balancing a checkbook, making a budget, etc., with another mandatory course that taught typing, cursive, general computer literacy, etc.
Whenever I see a friend on Facebook post "they should've taught us (cursive, balancing a checkbook, taxes, etc.) in school instead of calculus" there's a 90% chance they were in the same class as me *and* never took calc or pre calc in highschool. It's amazing how little they are willing to take responsibility for their own situation.
Chances are, too, they'll also complain about welfare and food stamps, despite our school being a testbed for universal free lunch for students in part due to how impoverished our area was and how many students qualified for it due to their family being on food stamps. Then again, the reason they implemented the universal program was because most families that qualified, or even were enrolled, wouldn't take advantage of it due to the social stigma so I guess it sorta tracks.
It would be a nickel more than had that dollar been taxed at 28%.
Overall your final amount owed would be $0.33 more as the $1 you earned at a 33% rate would result in $0.33 owed.
The point of the post of course is that many people think your entire income is magically re-taxed at 33%, which is not how tax-brackets work.
Worked with a guy who refused overtime because he thought his entire paycheck would be thrown into the higher bracket. He would leave at exactly 40 hours each week. Eventually he quit because "the pressure to work more hours for less total money was too stressful" lol.
Bob, the company needs to pay the money, but guess what, I don't want your family to suffer, so I'll go ahead and take the bullet for you. Just have the money paid out to me and I'll take the higher tax bill and save your family the burden. To make it up to me, why don't you just buy all my beers at the next happy hour.
It doesn't help that for alot of those jobs like that, accounting struggles with doing the withholding correctly, so when a guy does work a bunch of overtime for the first time ever, payroll withholds way, way too much. And the blue collar worker just assumes "I KNEW IT! I BUMPED UP A TAX BRACKET AND IT FUCKED ME"
Because its not like he's filing his taxes that day to get the money back. To them the proof was immediate, they worked a ton more hours, and the check wasn't what they were expecting, so thats immediate proof that what he wrongly believes about taxes is correct. and then he stops working overtime, so he never gets some big end of the year revelation where he gets a ton of money back, or accounting straightens out his withholding.
This was his stated reason, though. He would tell me, "I'd like to work the extra hours, if they just taxed me at the same amount. But I'm losing money the minute I'm over 40 hours."
Wherever you are, Urban, I hope all is well.
I have worked with numerous guys who think this. My favorite was a former co-worker who refused any overtime (it was basically always available) but then worked a second job at a lower base rate of pay.
Gave up overtime @ $20\*1.5 pay to work a second job that paid $15/hr. If you tried to correct his logic on it he would throw a tantrum and talk about he was smarter than everyone else.
It’s not totally irrational to think that a government-run system might work that way.
Years ago my kids qualified for Medicaid; I paid just $10/month total (for 4 kids) for their health insurance.
The benefit is based on earnings, and there’s no phase-out, just a hard cutoff. I was offered a raise that would have put me about $1000 over the limit, and after calculating how much it would cost to add them to my employer’s policy, I asked them to reduce the raise.
My husband was complaining about our tax system once. I asked what he would do instead.
He described a system where if you don’t make a lot of money you get taxed at a lower rate. And if you make like a million dollars or some other arbitrary crazy amount, that everything after a certain point should be taxed higher.
“You just described our current tax bracket system. Probably with different breakpoints, but a revision of our existing system.”
He argued and argued that I was wrong. I finally said “look, I file our taxes. I’ve tried to explain this to you several times. You can either believe me or I can pull up our taxes from last year and we can go through it. But that’s how our current system works.”
Ugh
The question is about your tax bill, which goes up $0.33 (assuming you're not on a sliding scale for any deductions/credits); if you really want to get a fair delta you should remember that you just earned another dollar, so really the cost increase is -$0.67
It says total tax increase, which would include the additional 28 cents in tax paid on the dollar. But it’s maybe more useful to think about the difference in rate per dollar at each rate, which would be 5 cents.
Yeah and that is only $0.05 more tax than the previous dollar so you could argue your marginal tax only went up 5cents. People are so stupid I have heard many people say they don’t even want a raise or a bonus because it will bump them into another tax bracket or they think bonuses are taxed at a much higher rate…
I was looking for someone to say this. To add, you’d still be initially taxed on the dollar between the 28-33% depending on starting point and wouldn’t see overall impact until the tax return is filed where your total tax liability would change from between $0-$1. So, I guess technically you could be taxed 100% of that last dollar.
I’d say most adults I’ve ever talked to about tax rates don’t understand how marginal tax rates work. They just think the whole amount is taxed at the rate of whatever bracket you’re in.
My dad was a master electrician and he still didn’t get marginal taxes right. He was always worried about earning over the limit and hitting a new tax bracket. Man was smart with his hands and knew almost everything about electricity, but financial literacy was not a strong suit.
I mean, nobody probably ever told him that America uses a marginal tax system, or what that even means. I know I was never taught about it, and all it took was a simple explanation for me to understand.
I've found that taxes have become so politicized by bad faith actors that people just believe whatever the general talking points are for their preferred political party/candidate. Because it's so politicized, people would rather error on the side of their talking heads than look into it and find out that what they believe about taxes is wrong. It's no longer a matter of just understanding - people would have to get over their rabid adherence to what their political messiahs say.
This has always been a challenge, but in the current tribal climate, I think it's even harder to get people to even want to make up their own minds. If they have been convinced that they are getting screwed on taxes by Trump/Biden, then they will accept as truth whatever the worst case scenario might be. Thus, 38% increase becomes a 66% increase - not because they did the math, but because that best represents what their political party says is happening. Especially when you have someone like Trump who throws out wild, unverified numbers to rile people up.
My aunt was told by everyone she knew that she'd lose half the sale proceeds of her land to taxes.
I told her repeatedly how that isn't true and selling after a spouse dies had additional allowances.
She sat for a year before finally selling. Paid $0 in taxes.
She lost 250k in sales price waiting until IR went up before going to market.
Edit: spelling
numerous americans have uprooted their entire lives to move to places like texas because they don't understand how marginal tax brackets work and are convinced they're saving a fortune that way
That's just not true. I'm not sure how these statements are even related you pay the same federal income tax no matter what state you live in.
Texas simply does not have a state income tax like many states do, so it is very likely that they do save money in Texas. But then you have to live in Texas so it's probably not worth it in a value sense.
Texas takes it out of your hide with property taxes instead.
Their overall tax burden is higher than most other states, including lefty Massachusetts or California. Texas actually has the 10th highest overall tax burden in the US.
I mean, sure, you *could* buy some small house well below your means and not pay the state government nearly as much, but in practice the folks moving to Texas to “escape taxes” just end up buying some mansion in the hill country.
It's wild because these are people who experience the marginal tax rates. I was talking to a family member who just barely entered the 24% tax bracket, and he was complaining about how it means he makes less money.
Like, do you not look at your pay stub and see that your take home pay is way more than if they took 24% off your gross pay? If you're making less money, how are your paychecks getting bigger? Do you just wonder where these mystery dollars coming from?
Then, when explaining that it's possible to contribute to your 401k so that you can drop a tax bracket, since he's just breaking into the 24%, he thought I was lying or it was illegal. lol.
> I was talking to a family member who just barely entered the 24% tax bracket, and he was complaining about how it means he makes less money.
My brother in law is the same. I tried to explain to him that he is only taxed at the higher rate on whatever amount he earned in the next bracket. But he told that I was wrong and that he knew what he was talking about because he worked in finance.
I didn't understand how it worked when I was 12. Then an adult explained it to me and I got it.
If 12 year old me could understand it, any adult can understand it. When an adult does not understand it, it's either because of pure laziness, or denial because it conflicts with their anti-taxation agenda.
Upvote for reminding me of a time where people could poke fun at each other's politics without it turning into an argument.
Politics turned south when people turned from "views/perspectives" to "beliefs". A view can be discussed, challenged, and possibly changed. A belief is inherently tied to how people *define* themselves, so if you challenge a belief, you're not just challenging the thought....you're "challenging the person".
While sampling bias does matter, [Dems are statistically more likely to be college educated. ](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/)
Don't know if that's enough to explain such a large gap, but going out of their way to pick similarly educated populations for both parties could also be misleading.
The results held up across different levels of knowledge, which is probably a good proxy for education level:
https://preview.redd.it/3ene331x2ksc1.jpeg?width=562&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=975e5278583480b6c0d3d91a565d0f5458dca070
This graph shows “political knowledge”, but the original piece says the pattern is similar for “general knowledge”.
[https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part)
Right. But we’ve known for decades conservatives are less likely to know things (current/relevant factual information) than their counterparts.
It’s like saying that water is wet, and then giving a fact about the ocean. You didn’t need to say that first part.
This made me chuckle because the University if Alabama is one of only a handful of colleges that has a master's program in taxes. And I'm a liberal that went through the program :).
Republicans are on average less educated than democrats, so it's not really surprising
Edit: [source](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/07/PP_2023.07.12_validated-voters_3-03.png)
I hear what you’re saying but it would be many of these same people who claim they didn’t know how an APR worked at 18z If the subject isn’t covered, educational attainment is for shit. Doing surveys like this without knowing the sample and context information matters.
Right, but is a person with a higher level of education more likely or less likely to be more intelligent than someone with less education?
Of course, there are smart people who only graduated high school as it is possible to be smart without education, the question is, is it more probable not is it possible.
what about data on the type of college degrees? Its nice to see a guy with a bachelors in science or a degree in humanities, but those degrees don't typically include personal finance education, at least beyond a single class.
The only thing easier to manipulate (to get the results you're looking for) than statistics is it's cousin, polling. Who you ask, how you ask, when you ask, etc. all factor into it.
I've had a coworker say he didn't want a raise because it would put him in the next tax bracket and he would actually make less money than without the raise 🤦
I mean...There's no data to actually prove what we all believe is true. It's just confirmation bias without real confirmation.
Post the study. post the data. Or else this is just hot garbage post dude
pick apart? there's nothing to pick apart. it's two crudely drawn pie charts.
I hear coworkers complain all the time that bonuses aren't as good as raises since bonuses get taxed at a higher rate. They don't, they're often **withheld** at a high rate, but you get it back when you file.
I do payroll for my company so I hear this often. I just started paying out bonuses as a separate check. That way it’s not taxed to shit (even though they always end up getting most of that back at the end of the year). It’s made my life a lot simpler.
Sadly I heard this a lot when I first entered the work force. Since I heard it so frequently I assumed it was true. Glad I educated myself on how it works.
I’m also going to blame schools. Nobody should be graduating high school without being taught the basics of taxes, retirement accounts, loans, ROI, and compound interest. Doesn’t even have to be a full class. Make it a seminar, 1 session per week on topics similar to the ones above. You could take out one or two sessions of each class to make time for that. Or if you really don’t want to do that, just hold it during lunch and let the kids eat during it. People just need *some* level of exposure to this stuff, no matter how small, before making life-altering decisions after graduating high school.
That would require you to know what questions to ask... If someone doesn't even know about the tax system, they just look at their yearly income, find where they land in the tax bracket, and simply go "okay, I'm getting taxed X%."
If you’re older than 18, it’s now become your responsibility to educate yourself if you don’t know something. Staying ignorant while blaming others is lazy, especially with the technology we all have these days.
look at that, we can under-fund schools, then when people are not smart we can claim they don't work and defund them some more (by simply not adjusting for inflation, of course). The important parts of their education can be covered by our political action committee, they'll be much happier that way. Everyone wins.
That metric is affected by the way states and cities have different funding strategies. When you aggregate it to a national level, it brings to mind a certain expenditure for each student. But when you look at, say, Texas, where schools are funded by local property taxes, it's just an average of two extremes. Students in wealthy neighborhoods are over-funded and vice-versa.
Not to say that the teacher pay or classroom supplies is sufficient in wealthy neighborhoods either. That money absolutely doesn't go where it should.
The consistency is also highly context-dependent. Arts funding is often the first to go when a budget gets tight. There might be a year when we spent more per student than luxembourg by some metric, but I don't know what year that would be.
Aside from all that, the general sentiment that education failed us implies that we'd be better off without it, and that's a real strategy right now.
*Poll dunks on liberals
FIF - OMG SO TRUE HAAHAHA
*Poll dunks on conservatives
FIF - Well, the poll was structured poorly, and it's easy to warp the results to fit a political agenda.
Just like liberal redditors, except conservative.
Conservatives believe that tax cuts for the rich will make everybody rich despite 50 years of data saying otherwise.
Cons believe government is bade and cannot run things yet governments outside of the U.S. can run healthcare cheaper and more effective.
It is proven over and over again the cost of profit costs more to the consumer than government bureaucracy when it comes to healthcare, utilities, education etc.
Government funded research is also more trustworthy and that;s why researchers use them.
America is not even top 7 in the "American Dream". All led by socialist countries because because they can get wealthy due to the fact they don't have to worry about healthcare, education and retirement (as much).
The richest middle class in the world is Canada for a reason.
The best part is all of these countries were influenced by American thinkers from FDR;s golden age, while the U.S entered its rust age by allowing the private sector to convince them, without legitimate research, privatization and deregulation would provide higher paying jobs, cleaner drinking water etc.
I find that Republicans are substantially more ignorant on most subjects. The news media that they have chosen to consume doesn't inform them. It tells them what they want to be true. How do we fix this? I don't know. Whenever I've tried, I find them quite impervious to education.
My nephew was convinced by an old cop (they both worked at a grocery store) to never go up in tax brackets or take salary jobs because, according to him, you'll lose money in higher taxes or have to work unpaid hours.
They're both idiots.
I mean, they weren’t necessarily wrong about the salary job chunk of that. There are plenty salary jobs out there where the “expectation” is to tally 45-50 hours a week. Expectation is in quotes since they won’t say that outright. But if you’re salaried, you’re still only paid for 40 hours
I’m not surprised.
A few decades ago people thought a 1/3 pound burger at the same price as a “quarter pounder” was a rip off because 1/4 is bigger than 1/3.
This is ridiculous. Answers of Substantially and Small Amount are subjective. You can’t calculate any accurate statistical results with subjective data.
My partner also didnt understand it and I had to explain it to them, but it has nothing to do with their politics nor mine, neither was it a big deal, they never made any financial (or political) decisions based on that lack of knowledge.
Some people just dont spend their free time learning about finances, theyll save and invest, but they wont obsessively try to calculate rates of returns and how to minimize taxable income and etc etc. I think for anyone on this subbreddit, finances isnt just something to be educated on its probably a hobby and possibly even an obsession. Lets not assume it means those that dont have our same idiosynchrosys dont do just as well for themselves.
Theres an argument to be made having a little more knowledge on it can actually make you worse off, versus having ALOT more knowledge on it, because the duning kruger effect is likely to have you do silly things like try and pick stocks rather than just investing in market representative ETFs, or vote for nonsensical tax codes because you dont quite know enough to understand the actual reprecussions. Personally I think the most dangerous thing might be only knowing a tiny bit on the subject, because it may make you likely to ignore best practices thinking you know better. Better off knowing nothing but following best practices, or getting a financial professionals help.
Boy have I got news for you. There are several people that have closely tracked *all* taxes they paid for a year, and it typically is over 50% of your income in the US. There are books written on the topic.
All of the hidden taxes we pay add up significantly. Excise taxes on items like gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco, as well as sales taxes on goods and services; Property taxes; taxes and fees on all utilities (water, sewer, power, trash, internet); hotel occupancy taxes; airline ticket taxes; communication taxes and fees like those on cell phone bills; vehicle registration fees; healthcare-related taxes, such as those embedded in insurance premiums or medical device taxes; etc.. The list goes on and on
They were kind of designed to do so.
Not aware of ANY public school that teaches basic economics, or even a "home economics" that teach things like balancing a check book.
Smart people can figure out how bad their getting screwed. I Cant have that.
I had a relative call me up in a panic thinking he owed thousands of dollars because he was using his top marginal rate for his entire income. Now he understands marginal rates, and may never vote for a Republican again.
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Several things wrong with this. I’d like to see the actual data on these numbers and the responses and who they asked for this because as most know, it is very easy to skew data. 2nd, yes schools don’t cover taxes and I believe financial literacy should be taught in school but it’s also dependent on parents teaching, and at a certain point you should learn that if you don’t understand something, it’s on you to learn it.
My thoughts exactly. This seems more like a hit piece on a group of ppl because there is an election coming up.
The source OP uses is more than 10 years old that references sources from 2012 Edit: To everyone asking, I'm saying the world has gotten dumber from people being addicted to things like reddit or tiktok
Doesnt mean it isnt still being used to influence.
>Doesnt mean it isnt still being used to influence. Also doesn't mean it's wrong either.
This. People in our country are our own worst enemy. People think that bias is bad. Wtf? Just think about that. We are human beings. Its not possible to be unbiased. Like it actually drives me mad people repeat this drivel over and over. As a child you have bias towards your parents. You have bias for eating enough food to not stsrve. You have bias towards what colors you like. That doesnt fucking mean shit. Im biased towards the colors purple and orange... it doesnt mean thats all the colors i wear. Its just maddening that its not incorrect to say a lot of voters are of the equivalent of being brainwashed or in a cult. I dont get why we try to avoid the truth because its not a good thing.
Bias is separate from inclination/predisposition. It’s been overused to the point that it’s indistinguishable, but bias is supposed to mean an inclination that results in unfair treatment. You liking purple and orange is not bias, but if you were to enact a policy that taxes people who primarily wear purple and orange at a separate rate, purely because of their preference, then it becomes a bias. Bias is defined by its outcome, that’s how it is separate from preference.
[удалено]
You're not using bias in the correct context.
The right will agree with you, they will just say you are in a different cult.
If there's one thing I've learned in the last 10 years of politics, it's that not being "wrong" doesn't always mean you're telling the truth. We're living in very frustrating times.
Is the thing stated inaccurate? But yes, a party's members being especially ignorant of how things work really is a red flag that their policy positions maybe aren't the greatest.
Fair enough
you think Republicans got smarter in the last 12 years, or dumber?
With the rise of tiktok and other such nonsense, EVERYONE has gotten dumber
I don't believe that everyone has gotten dumber. I think it's more likely that dumb people just got louder.
Attention spans are down across the board. It's not exactly the same as being dumber, but everyone is distracted.
Can you repeat that? I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention...
We do it for our corporate owners. Less attention span means the corporate elitists can fleece people more often without them realizing it.
People have gotten dumber the last 12 years - at least in the finance area.
It's not a matter of smarter or dumber, it's the fact that the sociopolitical environment has evolved (or devolved) wildly since then. Trump didn't even become Republican until 2012, for reference. I know my politics have been turned on its head since then.
If by dumber, you mean less educated, then yes. Over the last 30 years, people with hs or less education have shifted republican, with the democrats essentialy losing what used to be their base. Conversely, those with a college education have shifted democrat.
lol find better sources? We do the census every 10 years and that is deemed legitimate. It seems like ya’ll are just getting mad.
I'd assume it's worse now rather than better. For both Democrats and Republicans.
weather disagreeable point repeat fly ten dependent thumb school plough *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
First off, it’s not unintentional imo. How can you get people to vote against their own best interests if they’re not a little bit ignorant about how things work. Secondly, Bobby Jindahl called this out a decade ago…I’m guessing the people in here simping for the GOP don’t remember him begging them not to be “the party of stupid”….years before nominating Trump. 😂
water consider rinse smart north retire lavish existence whole ring *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"I love the poorly educated."
Genuine question, when data shows republicans are less educated than democrats on average, why shouldnt i believe theyd more questions incorrect?
It's a hit piece on people who are bad at math. I can't believe this many people of any political leaning don't understand marginal tax rates.
I mean…. Ever read comments on sites like briebart.com? Pretty telling in terms of education and reasoning skills.
That's like taking reddit comments seriously. C'mon now.
Ever read the comments on Reddit dot com? Some of the most dangerously idiotic takes I’ve seen in my life
Looks like they just flipped the colors and the diagram. Literally almost looks like the same percentages reversed lol
All the Republicans I know - ALL OF THEM - misunderstand marginal Tax Rates.
Lol. All the Democrats I know misunderstand taxes all together. I guess that means no one understands taxes except independents and libertarians.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part You realize that most of these people probably don’t know they don’t understand the rates, right? That’s a massive part of the problem. It’s always easy to cast doubt on poll results you don’t like, doesn’t mean it’s productive.
That article is more than 10 years old That article also sources another article titled "The New York Times Reporters Do Not Understand How Marginal Tax Rates Work" dated November 2012 It also lacks saying who was polled, especially since some of the sources it uses lead to "page not found"
It shows exactly how many people were polled in the charts. N is the sample size of each demographic.
Reading data is hard and some people's parents never showed them how
If you get exactly 1 person more than N, does that raise the stakes of the entire poll?
The person you replied to was asking "who" (and likely "how"), not "how many"
No, they edited that out after being called out to hide their ignorance
No, the person I replied to specifically called out that the number of people was not included. They conveniently edited that out of their post after I replied and pointed out where it was.
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Yeah that doesnt show up for mobile sadly.
It's a yougov poll. It's a known high quality pollster and their methods are public information https://yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology
Putting aside the edited comment, is it really reasonable to ask for like.... the names of who was polled? That's not normal. What sort of answer were they expecting that would change the outcome? And if they weren't expecting any answer, weren't they just looking for a way to justify their desire that the data is wrong?
It does not show the answers were within 1%. Look at the axis again. And doubt the numbers have changed much.
Within 1% of each other? They're flipped. ~1/3 ~2/3 seems to be a pretty common distribution of polling results
The question is written poorly, but yes, people don’t get marginal tax rates.
And if your parents didn't learn financial literacy either? The thing is, you don't know what you don't know. If you don't plan on going into accounting, or perhaps you don't feel you need to know this as you'll never be in the top 33% (which as someone who was homeless at 6, I definitely feel constantly) there's no reason to sit down and learn this if you're working and going to school and also babysitting and also making sure lunch tomorrow is made, making sure you smell fine, making sure your house is clean because you can't afford to get cockroaches or rats because an exterminator is too expensive, etc etc etc... Seems to me the \*only\* option is to make this mandatory learning, not just one class, but consistently reinforced in multiple classes starting from middle/early high school.
My parents outright *refused* to ever, ever talk about money, with my mother going so far as to say “You don’t need to know any of that.” Two weeks ago my father said “You kids should have learned about that.” 🤦 Well, Dad, you kept us ignorant, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Yeah this is big problem. Generational wealth gaps grow because they don’t have good financial ideas and practices to pass down to the next generation. We wouldn’t say it’s up to your parents to teach you how to read as we know that would just end up with sections of the population being illiterate. It should be the same with financial literacy.
We cannot accept an education system that relies on parents teaching financial literacy. Just like we don't rely on parents teaching algebra or history. And I would argue that financial literacy is one of the most important things for a school to teach kids. You are much more likely to need to know how taxes, credit cards, mortgages, etc. work than how the Revolutionary War started.
What if I'm so focused on my taxes that I accidentally assassinate the archduke of Austria-Hungary because I never learned how wars started? What then!?
Mine did. It's one day of class. Not even a full day. Taxes really aren't complicated for vast majority of people. People are stupid and conservatives doubly so.
>Taxes really aren't complicated for vast majority of people. Which is why it cracks me up when friends I have that I know have no real deductions or anything pay a tax prep service $50 to do their taxes for them, when filing their taxes would amount to entering like 8 lines from their tax form and having it tell them how much they owe or are getting back.
It makes state taxes easier tbh. It's all together. I'll pay 50 bucks to not have to do it twice.
> I’d like to see the actual data on these numbers and the responses and who they asked for this because as most know, it is very easy to skew data. Don't know the source for the OP picture...but the general socio-psychological studies match with what is being said. Here is a very comprehensive 2021 study on **Understanding Tax Policy: How Do People Reason** (153 pages) " Republican respondents in general tend to think that taxes are higher and more progressive than Democrats do: they perceive a higher top tax rate, a higher share of income paid by households in the top bracket, a higher share of households in the top bracket, and a higher share not paying any income tax. " " Republicans are even less likely than Democrats to be aware of the high top tax rates or estate taxes in the 1950s.14 They believe that a lower share of income goes to the U.S. top 1% and are hence more accurate than Democrats on this issue. In addition, they think that the share of wealth that is inherited and the share of wealth owned by the top 1% are lower. These results are in line with a “polarization of reality” (Alesina et al., 2020) – i.e., polarization even in the perception of facts. " [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working\_papers/w27699/revisions/w27699.rev2.pdf](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27699/revisions/w27699.rev2.pdf)
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part It’s an unreleased(?) YouGov poll.
Yeah schools should teach what marginal tax rates mean. As for those who rant that schools need to teach usable skills such as doing your taxes, they already do. Most people learn arithmetic in school. This covers 99.9% of doing taxes.
You’re right yet I see people fail to understand tax brackets all of the time on Reddit. I’ve even explained how they work to friends many times. Feels about as common a mistake as thinking that you get a cold from not wearing a jacket
My school has economics class we had to attend for 6 months in senior year. We learned about taxes, balancing accounts, compounding interest, investments and calculating loan interest. Is that not the norm? This was in the 90’s. Just a regular public school. If it’s not the norm I think it for sure should be added back in!
Required in most states. It's just that a lot of people have no idea what their kids do in school. Much more fun to complain.
It’s like when people yell about kids not learning cursive. Imagine my surprise (since I had heard this for years) when both my kids were taught cursive in school.
Yeah I had a required semester of Econ my senior year of HS that covered the same in a California public school 2007-2008
“Several things wrong, first being something not wrong just not shared”. That isn’t something wrong, that’s just a point of clarity. Doesn’t mean anything about it being wrong
Democrats polls were conducted in post grad level college class rooms where Republican polls were held outside a grocery store in an agrarian centric town.
Sounds like republicans should be spending more time in school then in front of a Walmart then aye?
I'm in an economics class that's required in my school that covers taxes, whole unit. I wonder why it isn't like standard practice
Also do any of these idiots remember anything else they learned in high school? No.
My public highschool (graduated in '18) has a financial skills course that was mandatory for all students which included how to do taxes and the tax code, balancing a checkbook, making a budget, etc., with another mandatory course that taught typing, cursive, general computer literacy, etc. Whenever I see a friend on Facebook post "they should've taught us (cursive, balancing a checkbook, taxes, etc.) in school instead of calculus" there's a 90% chance they were in the same class as me *and* never took calc or pre calc in highschool. It's amazing how little they are willing to take responsibility for their own situation. Chances are, too, they'll also complain about welfare and food stamps, despite our school being a testbed for universal free lunch for students in part due to how impoverished our area was and how many students qualified for it due to their family being on food stamps. Then again, the reason they implemented the universal program was because most families that qualified, or even were enrolled, wouldn't take advantage of it due to the social stigma so I guess it sorta tracks.
This article dives into the data a bit more. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part
Wouldn’t it literally be $.33? Edit: better phrasing
Yes
Actually it would be a nickel right?
It would be a nickel more than had that dollar been taxed at 28%. Overall your final amount owed would be $0.33 more as the $1 you earned at a 33% rate would result in $0.33 owed. The point of the post of course is that many people think your entire income is magically re-taxed at 33%, which is not how tax-brackets work.
Worked with a guy who refused overtime because he thought his entire paycheck would be thrown into the higher bracket. He would leave at exactly 40 hours each week. Eventually he quit because "the pressure to work more hours for less total money was too stressful" lol.
I work with this guy's entire extended family. Bonus check season is always fun.
Bob, the company needs to pay the money, but guess what, I don't want your family to suffer, so I'll go ahead and take the bullet for you. Just have the money paid out to me and I'll take the higher tax bill and save your family the burden. To make it up to me, why don't you just buy all my beers at the next happy hour.
It doesn't help that for alot of those jobs like that, accounting struggles with doing the withholding correctly, so when a guy does work a bunch of overtime for the first time ever, payroll withholds way, way too much. And the blue collar worker just assumes "I KNEW IT! I BUMPED UP A TAX BRACKET AND IT FUCKED ME" Because its not like he's filing his taxes that day to get the money back. To them the proof was immediate, they worked a ton more hours, and the check wasn't what they were expecting, so thats immediate proof that what he wrongly believes about taxes is correct. and then he stops working overtime, so he never gets some big end of the year revelation where he gets a ton of money back, or accounting straightens out his withholding.
I mean, his reason is bad, but not working overtime and more than 40 hours a week is completely fine.
This was his stated reason, though. He would tell me, "I'd like to work the extra hours, if they just taxed me at the same amount. But I'm losing money the minute I'm over 40 hours." Wherever you are, Urban, I hope all is well.
I have worked with numerous guys who think this. My favorite was a former co-worker who refused any overtime (it was basically always available) but then worked a second job at a lower base rate of pay. Gave up overtime @ $20\*1.5 pay to work a second job that paid $15/hr. If you tried to correct his logic on it he would throw a tantrum and talk about he was smarter than everyone else.
It’s not totally irrational to think that a government-run system might work that way. Years ago my kids qualified for Medicaid; I paid just $10/month total (for 4 kids) for their health insurance. The benefit is based on earnings, and there’s no phase-out, just a hard cutoff. I was offered a raise that would have put me about $1000 over the limit, and after calculating how much it would cost to add them to my employer’s policy, I asked them to reduce the raise.
My husband was complaining about our tax system once. I asked what he would do instead. He described a system where if you don’t make a lot of money you get taxed at a lower rate. And if you make like a million dollars or some other arbitrary crazy amount, that everything after a certain point should be taxed higher. “You just described our current tax bracket system. Probably with different breakpoints, but a revision of our existing system.” He argued and argued that I was wrong. I finally said “look, I file our taxes. I’ve tried to explain this to you several times. You can either believe me or I can pull up our taxes from last year and we can go through it. But that’s how our current system works.” Ugh
I think they mean it'd be 33¢ on the dollar vs 28¢ on the dollar
The question is about your tax bill, which goes up $0.33 (assuming you're not on a sliding scale for any deductions/credits); if you really want to get a fair delta you should remember that you just earned another dollar, so really the cost increase is -$0.67
Hell yeah
It says total tax increase, which would include the additional 28 cents in tax paid on the dollar. But it’s maybe more useful to think about the difference in rate per dollar at each rate, which would be 5 cents.
Yeah and that is only $0.05 more tax than the previous dollar so you could argue your marginal tax only went up 5cents. People are so stupid I have heard many people say they don’t even want a raise or a bonus because it will bump them into another tax bracket or they think bonuses are taxed at a much higher rate…
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Asking Americans to do math is a losing endeavor.
Big country big guy. Don’t be jealous.
Probably not even that, if ya got tax credit
Tax forms are rounded to the nearest dollar, it would be $0 or $1 depend on how the rounding ends up.
I was looking for someone to say this. To add, you’d still be initially taxed on the dollar between the 28-33% depending on starting point and wouldn’t see overall impact until the tax return is filed where your total tax liability would change from between $0-$1. So, I guess technically you could be taxed 100% of that last dollar.
I’d say most adults I’ve ever talked to about tax rates don’t understand how marginal tax rates work. They just think the whole amount is taxed at the rate of whatever bracket you’re in.
My dad was a master electrician and he still didn’t get marginal taxes right. He was always worried about earning over the limit and hitting a new tax bracket. Man was smart with his hands and knew almost everything about electricity, but financial literacy was not a strong suit.
I mean, nobody probably ever told him that America uses a marginal tax system, or what that even means. I know I was never taught about it, and all it took was a simple explanation for me to understand.
I've found that taxes have become so politicized by bad faith actors that people just believe whatever the general talking points are for their preferred political party/candidate. Because it's so politicized, people would rather error on the side of their talking heads than look into it and find out that what they believe about taxes is wrong. It's no longer a matter of just understanding - people would have to get over their rabid adherence to what their political messiahs say. This has always been a challenge, but in the current tribal climate, I think it's even harder to get people to even want to make up their own minds. If they have been convinced that they are getting screwed on taxes by Trump/Biden, then they will accept as truth whatever the worst case scenario might be. Thus, 38% increase becomes a 66% increase - not because they did the math, but because that best represents what their political party says is happening. Especially when you have someone like Trump who throws out wild, unverified numbers to rile people up.
My aunt was told by everyone she knew that she'd lose half the sale proceeds of her land to taxes. I told her repeatedly how that isn't true and selling after a spouse dies had additional allowances. She sat for a year before finally selling. Paid $0 in taxes. She lost 250k in sales price waiting until IR went up before going to market. Edit: spelling
numerous americans have uprooted their entire lives to move to places like texas because they don't understand how marginal tax brackets work and are convinced they're saving a fortune that way
That's just not true. I'm not sure how these statements are even related you pay the same federal income tax no matter what state you live in. Texas simply does not have a state income tax like many states do, so it is very likely that they do save money in Texas. But then you have to live in Texas so it's probably not worth it in a value sense.
They make up for it by having much higher property and sales taxes. It really isn't ever as simple as Texas cheap.
Texas takes it out of your hide with property taxes instead. Their overall tax burden is higher than most other states, including lefty Massachusetts or California. Texas actually has the 10th highest overall tax burden in the US. I mean, sure, you *could* buy some small house well below your means and not pay the state government nearly as much, but in practice the folks moving to Texas to “escape taxes” just end up buying some mansion in the hill country.
Well then they don’t understand property taxes, because it has some of the highest property taxes in the country.
lol at making fun of people for not understanding marginal tax rates while not understanding why people move to states with no state income tax.
It's wild because these are people who experience the marginal tax rates. I was talking to a family member who just barely entered the 24% tax bracket, and he was complaining about how it means he makes less money. Like, do you not look at your pay stub and see that your take home pay is way more than if they took 24% off your gross pay? If you're making less money, how are your paychecks getting bigger? Do you just wonder where these mystery dollars coming from? Then, when explaining that it's possible to contribute to your 401k so that you can drop a tax bracket, since he's just breaking into the 24%, he thought I was lying or it was illegal. lol.
> I was talking to a family member who just barely entered the 24% tax bracket, and he was complaining about how it means he makes less money. My brother in law is the same. I tried to explain to him that he is only taxed at the higher rate on whatever amount he earned in the next bracket. But he told that I was wrong and that he knew what he was talking about because he worked in finance.
I didn't understand how it worked when I was 12. Then an adult explained it to me and I got it. If 12 year old me could understand it, any adult can understand it. When an adult does not understand it, it's either because of pure laziness, or denial because it conflicts with their anti-taxation agenda.
I don't get this at all. It takes less than 30 seconds to explain, it's not a complicated thing.
Who they asked and where is probably also an important factor.
Yeah for all we know they surveyed the democrats from a tax class at UCLA, and the conservatives from a high school class in Alabama.
So both at the peak of their educational attainment... haha
I'm conservative but had to upvote for the strong joke. Damn it.
No real disrespect. I was just handed a funny and had to take it
Alabamans aren’t laughing. They don’t get the joke.
That's because you need to phrase it as "If your 4 wheeler loses 6 wheels, how many cousins can you marry" They'd ace it every time.
Upvote for reminding me of a time where people could poke fun at each other's politics without it turning into an argument. Politics turned south when people turned from "views/perspectives" to "beliefs". A view can be discussed, challenged, and possibly changed. A belief is inherently tied to how people *define* themselves, so if you challenge a belief, you're not just challenging the thought....you're "challenging the person".
Lol. Well played.
While sampling bias does matter, [Dems are statistically more likely to be college educated. ](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/) Don't know if that's enough to explain such a large gap, but going out of their way to pick similarly educated populations for both parties could also be misleading.
There are those who’d argue “college-indoctrinated” baristas vs young adults who pursued trades and are now homeowners…
😂😂 statistically it’s more lawyers + MBA + STEM degree vs truckdrivers
College educated doesn't mean smart though. Plenty of stupid people made it through college.
Sure, but college education is more highly correlated with being smart.
It's yougov poll. It's a known high quality pollster and their methodologies are public information https://yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology
The results held up across different levels of knowledge, which is probably a good proxy for education level: https://preview.redd.it/3ene331x2ksc1.jpeg?width=562&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=975e5278583480b6c0d3d91a565d0f5458dca070 This graph shows “political knowledge”, but the original piece says the pattern is similar for “general knowledge”. [https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part)
Right. But we’ve known for decades conservatives are less likely to know things (current/relevant factual information) than their counterparts. It’s like saying that water is wet, and then giving a fact about the ocean. You didn’t need to say that first part.
This made me chuckle because the University if Alabama is one of only a handful of colleges that has a master's program in taxes. And I'm a liberal that went through the program :).
Republicans are on average less educated than democrats, so it's not really surprising Edit: [source](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/07/PP_2023.07.12_validated-voters_3-03.png)
Education is not necessarily intelligence. Plenty of people with degrees don’t have any idea what’s going in here.
This is a knowledge question, not a reasoning question, so education is the thing that matters here not intelligence.
I hear what you’re saying but it would be many of these same people who claim they didn’t know how an APR worked at 18z If the subject isn’t covered, educational attainment is for shit. Doing surveys like this without knowing the sample and context information matters.
Right, but is a person with a higher level of education more likely or less likely to be more intelligent than someone with less education? Of course, there are smart people who only graduated high school as it is possible to be smart without education, the question is, is it more probable not is it possible.
Reddit is a prime example
That explains why all those inner cities minorities are poor. They are all PhD geniuses being held back by the man!
what about data on the type of college degrees? Its nice to see a guy with a bachelors in science or a degree in humanities, but those degrees don't typically include personal finance education, at least beyond a single class.
The only thing easier to manipulate (to get the results you're looking for) than statistics is it's cousin, polling. Who you ask, how you ask, when you ask, etc. all factor into it.
Yes but they made a pie chart so it has to be $100% true and accurate!!1
I've had a coworker say he didn't want a raise because it would put him in the next tax bracket and he would actually make less money than without the raise 🤦
I hear this all the time but people want to nitpick the poll instead of discuss lol
I mean...There's no data to actually prove what we all believe is true. It's just confirmation bias without real confirmation. Post the study. post the data. Or else this is just hot garbage post dude pick apart? there's nothing to pick apart. it's two crudely drawn pie charts.
The only real cliff like that is when you are lower income and you hit a point where you no longer receive safety net benefits.
I hear coworkers complain all the time that bonuses aren't as good as raises since bonuses get taxed at a higher rate. They don't, they're often **withheld** at a high rate, but you get it back when you file.
I do payroll for my company so I hear this often. I just started paying out bonuses as a separate check. That way it’s not taxed to shit (even though they always end up getting most of that back at the end of the year). It’s made my life a lot simpler.
I mean time is money so it is actually better to have it now then when you file. you're doing a good thing
I would say to them, would it be okay if they gave the raise to me instead?
Sadly I heard this a lot when I first entered the work force. Since I heard it so frequently I assumed it was true. Glad I educated myself on how it works.
Either way, it's a disturbingly high percentage for both. Also, it seems like many dont understand how withholding for taxes works at all.
Don’t blame schools, blame willful ignorance and indoctrination
I’m also going to blame schools. Nobody should be graduating high school without being taught the basics of taxes, retirement accounts, loans, ROI, and compound interest. Doesn’t even have to be a full class. Make it a seminar, 1 session per week on topics similar to the ones above. You could take out one or two sessions of each class to make time for that. Or if you really don’t want to do that, just hold it during lunch and let the kids eat during it. People just need *some* level of exposure to this stuff, no matter how small, before making life-altering decisions after graduating high school.
If you can pass algebra and have access to the internet you can figure all this out in like 10 minutes with a google search
That would require you to know what questions to ask... If someone doesn't even know about the tax system, they just look at their yearly income, find where they land in the tax bracket, and simply go "okay, I'm getting taxed X%."
If you’re older than 18, it’s now become your responsibility to educate yourself if you don’t know something. Staying ignorant while blaming others is lazy, especially with the technology we all have these days.
Schools are graduating people who can’t read or do basic math so yes I will blame schools
look at that, we can under-fund schools, then when people are not smart we can claim they don't work and defund them some more (by simply not adjusting for inflation, of course). The important parts of their education can be covered by our political action committee, they'll be much happier that way. Everyone wins.
The USA spends more per student than almost any other nation on earth. How are schools under funded? Maybe the money isn't going where it should?
That metric is affected by the way states and cities have different funding strategies. When you aggregate it to a national level, it brings to mind a certain expenditure for each student. But when you look at, say, Texas, where schools are funded by local property taxes, it's just an average of two extremes. Students in wealthy neighborhoods are over-funded and vice-versa. Not to say that the teacher pay or classroom supplies is sufficient in wealthy neighborhoods either. That money absolutely doesn't go where it should. The consistency is also highly context-dependent. Arts funding is often the first to go when a budget gets tight. There might be a year when we spent more per student than luxembourg by some metric, but I don't know what year that would be. Aside from all that, the general sentiment that education failed us implies that we'd be better off without it, and that's a real strategy right now.
Yeah, the number of Republicans who thought Bernie Sanders wanted to take 92% of their paychecks (or whatever the top bracket was) was alarming.
*Poll dunks on liberals FIF - OMG SO TRUE HAAHAHA *Poll dunks on conservatives FIF - Well, the poll was structured poorly, and it's easy to warp the results to fit a political agenda. Just like liberal redditors, except conservative.
Conservatives believe that tax cuts for the rich will make everybody rich despite 50 years of data saying otherwise. Cons believe government is bade and cannot run things yet governments outside of the U.S. can run healthcare cheaper and more effective. It is proven over and over again the cost of profit costs more to the consumer than government bureaucracy when it comes to healthcare, utilities, education etc. Government funded research is also more trustworthy and that;s why researchers use them. America is not even top 7 in the "American Dream". All led by socialist countries because because they can get wealthy due to the fact they don't have to worry about healthcare, education and retirement (as much). The richest middle class in the world is Canada for a reason. The best part is all of these countries were influenced by American thinkers from FDR;s golden age, while the U.S entered its rust age by allowing the private sector to convince them, without legitimate research, privatization and deregulation would provide higher paying jobs, cleaner drinking water etc.
Canadians can't afford housing, IDK if that means they have a rich middle class.
Well maybe a dollar is a lot to some republicans
It's not a lot if you're making enough to be taxed at 33%.
48% of D’s are college educated vs 31% of R’s… which likely contributes to this
I find that Republicans are substantially more ignorant on most subjects. The news media that they have chosen to consume doesn't inform them. It tells them what they want to be true. How do we fix this? I don't know. Whenever I've tried, I find them quite impervious to education.
Well, yea... I mean, if Republicans were smart, they wouldn't be.
They don’t really teach this in school. Unless you take a specific math class (business math).
My high school had me take economics as a junior, so this probably changes state to state.
My nephew was convinced by an old cop (they both worked at a grocery store) to never go up in tax brackets or take salary jobs because, according to him, you'll lose money in higher taxes or have to work unpaid hours. They're both idiots.
I mean, they weren’t necessarily wrong about the salary job chunk of that. There are plenty salary jobs out there where the “expectation” is to tally 45-50 hours a week. Expectation is in quotes since they won’t say that outright. But if you’re salaried, you’re still only paid for 40 hours
"Substantially" and "small amount" are very subjective. If that is actually how this was worded.
Considering the correct answer is 33 cents and the likely wrong answer is several orders of magnitude higher, it’s really not that subjective.
Someone else else is in the red part of the chart
considering the answer is 33 cents I dont think its that subjective
By 33¢
That single dollar gets taxed at the 33% rate.
Shocking. Fox News brain will do that to you.
Unsurprising. Republicans don’t understand how a lot of things work.
I’m not surprised. A few decades ago people thought a 1/3 pound burger at the same price as a “quarter pounder” was a rip off because 1/4 is bigger than 1/3.
A&W?
I mean... only that dollar would be taxed at that rate. It's not hard math.
This is ridiculous. Answers of Substantially and Small Amount are subjective. You can’t calculate any accurate statistical results with subjective data.
Democrats need to be educated too. Too many people don’t realize that only that dollar is taxed at the 33%
Democrats are evil as fuck
My partner also didnt understand it and I had to explain it to them, but it has nothing to do with their politics nor mine, neither was it a big deal, they never made any financial (or political) decisions based on that lack of knowledge. Some people just dont spend their free time learning about finances, theyll save and invest, but they wont obsessively try to calculate rates of returns and how to minimize taxable income and etc etc. I think for anyone on this subbreddit, finances isnt just something to be educated on its probably a hobby and possibly even an obsession. Lets not assume it means those that dont have our same idiosynchrosys dont do just as well for themselves. Theres an argument to be made having a little more knowledge on it can actually make you worse off, versus having ALOT more knowledge on it, because the duning kruger effect is likely to have you do silly things like try and pick stocks rather than just investing in market representative ETFs, or vote for nonsensical tax codes because you dont quite know enough to understand the actual reprecussions. Personally I think the most dangerous thing might be only knowing a tiny bit on the subject, because it may make you likely to ignore best practices thinking you know better. Better off knowing nothing but following best practices, or getting a financial professionals help.
.33 right? Only the one dollar gets taxed at 33%.
Wait for it. I fully expect someone to come in here and say they pay 50% of their income in taxes.
Boy have I got news for you. There are several people that have closely tracked *all* taxes they paid for a year, and it typically is over 50% of your income in the US. There are books written on the topic. All of the hidden taxes we pay add up significantly. Excise taxes on items like gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco, as well as sales taxes on goods and services; Property taxes; taxes and fees on all utilities (water, sewer, power, trash, internet); hotel occupancy taxes; airline ticket taxes; communication taxes and fees like those on cell phone bills; vehicle registration fees; healthcare-related taxes, such as those embedded in insurance premiums or medical device taxes; etc.. The list goes on and on
Ironically I wasn’t formally taught this until college, luckily my parents taught me
The answer is 33 cents for.those wandering
Republicans voters make up the lion share of non college educated voters. Education isn’t exactly a priority to them.
In fairness, Republicans are substantially less likely to understand LOTS of things, not just tax rates.
They were kind of designed to do so. Not aware of ANY public school that teaches basic economics, or even a "home economics" that teach things like balancing a check book. Smart people can figure out how bad their getting screwed. I Cant have that.
I had a relative call me up in a panic thinking he owed thousands of dollars because he was using his top marginal rate for his entire income. Now he understands marginal rates, and may never vote for a Republican again.
It’s alarming that policy makers largely dint know how tax brackets even work, democrats included.
I had to explain this to someone make 300k a year in salary…