All to often people in the media tend to make assumptions that are generally regarded as true, without anyone actually checking the facts. Well, i did, and i have for you 3 extremly pervasive political myths that ive debunked with math.
1: Corporations are buying elections
The myth: Ever since the recent citizens united case in 2009, there has been an uproar among the political elite. The myth basically goes that now that corporations can contribute unlimited election funds to PACs there going to own the political system and squash anyone who isn't friendly to there cause.
The reality: Amazingly enough, companies don't seem to be to interested in spending money on something that doesn't earn them a single dollar in profit. Crazy right? Who would have thought that corporations wouldn't want to essentially throw away money.
You see in a recent study done by the good folks over at www.opensecrets.org they followed where the top 20 PACs spent there money in this last election (2010). The results? Of the top 20, only 4 PACs gave more to republicans than they did to democrats. 16 out of the top 20 PACs gave much more money to democrats than republicans. And these numbers are almost exactly the same as the 2008 election before the citizens united case.
So while yes the citizens united case did allow for a slightly more level playing field, the people who run corporations have little desire to waste there money on something that doesn’t help out there company.
2: Other countries hate us
The myth: For years people have been spreading this rumors. Foreign nations disprove of Americas actions. We are supposedly losing our support in both the middle east and among our allies and if we don't change up our actions we are are going to be facing an outright mutiny among our allies
The reality: The truth is America is generally viewed as a positive influence globally. On the whole other nations are glad that we take the head on huge foreign operations and shoulder the costs so they don't have to. Amazingly enough when you spend hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars helping out foreign nations we actually get something out of it.
The proof? America was rated the sixth most popular nation on a global poll. And while European nations lost some popularity overseas America continued to improve. As we have been for years.
3: We can solve this budget deficit with tax hikes
The myth: Barack Obama has been particularly bad on this one, going as far as to insist that raising taxes on the top 1% will solve the deficit. Hes so adamant in that belief that he stormed out of a recent budget negotiation because republicans wouldn't even consider raising taxes.
The reality: Lets just ignore the fact that raising taxes on the top earners in this country will hamper job creation, the fact that a bill raising taxes will never get passed the house, and the fact that raising taxes in a recession is just plain stupid. Lets ignore all that and get straight to the numbers.
Looking at the numbers we can see the average income of the top 1% of Americans is about 1.6 million dollars a year. 1.6 million times 3 million (one percent of the us population) means that the top 1 percent of Americans make about 4.8 trillion a year total. So even if we took 100% of the wages of the top 1% of Americans for a year, we wouldn't even cover half of the us national debt. And since most people are talking about a 3% increase on the wealthy rather than a 100%, the amount of money we would raise wouldn't even cover the interest on the amount of money the USFG owes.
For more of Kenny Thompsons work, check out his blog at civilianwatch.blogspot.com
