http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GWdFz-iaNI
Obama’s bombshell that 80% of Americans favor increasing taxes is blowing up the blogosphere now. Reactions range from “it’s a lie” to “they can’t do math” to Traffic Santa calling the president’s bluff: “I challenge you to introduce legislation raising taxes on 80% of Americans.”
The answer, however, I culled from my years of creating chartjunk. I suspect he’s getting his fungible numbers from this Gallup poll:
The only important number here is the first one, the 20%. The president said, in effect, if you’re not one of the 20% who actually responded you favor tax increases. Thus, 80% (which included people who didn’t answer the question) are for tax increases. While that’s sorta true, it’s about as disingenuous a statistic as I’ve ever heard.
Using the same logic, 96% of American are for spending cuts.
