Of course, they might not be stupid just wrong, only they might not be wrong either, I'm too lazy to check data on this but it would seem a safe bet that the "Your" in this question should be answered with up by many people, since many people still get raises even in suck-ass economies, and even if the raise didn't keep up with inflation - and for a lot of individual people it has, that would still be 'up'. Considering someone could truthfully answer up after getting a 2% cut in tax rate after getting a 5% raise with a promotion - not really all that uncommon an occurrence - interpreting the respondents as stupid from that does kinda make me roll my eyes at the author's own intellect.
I'm not arguing with the rest of your post, but this shows such a complete lack of conversational good-will that I can't help but believe you don't want to alter it. You, and I, and anyone else knows that if you get the question "did your taxes go up?", the question doesn't mean "did you pay more in taxes because you received a raise?", it means "did your tax rate increase?". I read the rest of your post thinking it was biased (as we all are), but rational. But then you cherried it with this, which really, displays a willingness to twist anything to your own ideology.
For all those people that had a 3% pay cut, or had their wages decrease due to a lack of raises coupled with marginal inflation over the past two years, did they receive a tax increase? If you read a democrat or, Kronos forbid, a "liberal" make that statement, you'd rightly jump down their throats -- and I'd be right behind you. Don't flip it and act like you're participating in discourse.
A much better approach would have been to characterize the basis of judgement (i.e. truth, objective) as biased through those who defined the terms in this situation. But don't play off someone paying more in taxes because of a raise as an "increase in taxes", when everyone knows it means an increase in rates.
I cannot even copy his manner because the manner of his prose was the manner of his thinking and that was a dazzling succession of gaps; and you cannot ape a gap because you are bound to fill it in somehow or other -- and blot it out in the process. -- Nabokov
Extended exposure to Fox News makes voters stupid, university study finds
- 16/12/2010 11:02:18 PM
791 Views
Seems like one of those chicken/egg scenarios, as alluded to by Macharius.
- 17/12/2010 01:09:15 AM
378 Views
Normally yes, in this case the author's just an incompetent idiot
- 17/12/2010 02:28:50 AM
462 Views
what are the affects of being exposed to inaccurate articels about biased surveys?
- 20/12/2010 11:30:35 PM
341 Views
Whereas people who watch CNN & MSNBC were that way to begin with...
- 21/12/2010 11:30:00 PM
337 Views