Monday, January 7, 2008

Romney Rebuttal Enclosed

Michael Medved, gives some useful information for a rebuttal in his article on townhall.com:

http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/c6692253-551a-45e4-ba9f-37e740fe9411

Specifically he references the tax foundations statistics on tax for the states:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html (Massachusetts)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/442.html (Arkansas)

We need to prevent Huckabee's Long tenure from being used against him. Let's adjust the discussion to put things in a yearly context.

Massachusetts's tax burden went from 9.8% in the year before Romney took office to 10.5% in his final year. Net increase 0.7% of the economy.
Arkansas tax burden went from 10.1% to 11.1% for Huckabee. Net increase 1.0%.

Now let's adjust for length of term:

RateOfIncrease/Year = (base + total increase)^(1/termInYears) - 1

Romney : (1 + .007)^((1/4) -1 = .001745 = .1745%
Huckabee : (1+ .01)^(1/10) - 1 = .000996 = .0996%

As you can see, Romney's per year increase in tax burden is significantly more than Huckabee's. Think of it this way:

that is .1745/.0996 = 175%.

I could say "Under Mitt Romney's tenure as governor the tax burden in Massachusetts increased 75% faster, than it did under Huckabee in Arkansas."

or another way to say it is to use the table below:



Romney

Year Tax as % of Economy % increase
2002 9.80% N/A
2003 10.00% 2.04%
2004 10.20% 2.00%
2005 10.50% 2.94%
2006 10.50% 0.00%
Average Increase/Year
1.75%









Huckabee

Year Tax as % of Economy % increase
1996 10.10% N/A
1997 10.10% 0.00%
1998 10.20% 0.99%
1999 10.20% 0.00%
2000 10.50% 2.94%
2001 10.50% 0.00%
2002 10.30% -1.90%
2003 10.00% -2.91%
2004 10.50% 5.00%
2005 11.20% 6.67%
2006 11.10% -0.89%
Average Increase/Year
0.99%




These numbers generated from the Tax Foundation tables show that Romney increased the tax burden of his state by an average of 1.75% each year (that is 1.75% more than the last years tax burden, not 1.75% of the economy).

This is significantly more than Huckabee. Huckabee increased the tax burden by only .99% each year.

This means Romney increased his state's tax burden 75% faster than Huckabee increased his state's tax burden.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. Way to go!

Brad said...

Thanks.