{"id":34477,"date":"2013-03-09T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34477"},"modified":"2013-03-09T16:04:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T20:04:42","slug":"another-sterling-example-of-unbiased-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34477","title":{"rendered":"Another “Sterling” Example of “Unbiased Reporting”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg.com reports that the number of Federal employees delinquent on their taxes has “gone up 11.5%”<\/a>.\u00a0 Gee, that means Federal employees are nothing but lazy drones and sacks of excrement taking unfair advantage, right?<\/p>\n

Well, not exactly.\u00a0 It’s true that more Federal employees were delinquent on their Federal taxes at the end of fiscal 2011 than at the end of the previous fiscal year.\u00a0 At the end of fiscal 2010, 2.9% of Federal employees – less than 1 in 35 – were delinquent.\u00a0 At the end of fiscal 2011, the rate had risen to 3.2% – less than 1 in 31.<\/p>\n

While that fact seems bad, it’s actually essentially meaningless until you know how it compares with the rest of the US taxpayers.\u00a0 And it turns out that when you do that comparison, you get a very different story from that implied by the headline.<\/p>\n

At the end of fiscal 2010, 7.8%<\/em><\/strong> of US taxpayers were delinquent on their Federal taxes – just less than\u00a0 1 in 13<\/em>.\u00a0 By the end of fiscal 2011, that percentage had risen to 8.2%<\/strong><\/em> – just less than 1 out of 12.<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, Federal employees are less than 40% as likely to be delinquent on their taxes as other US taxpayers<\/span>, and have been for years.\u00a0 But unless you read the article in detail and did the math yourself, you’d never know that.\u00a0 The story implies the opposite with its sensational headline, and doesn’t bother to make the relevant comparison for the reader.<\/p>\n

Shame on you, Bloomberg.com.\u00a0 You’re usually a damn good source of financial info, and are generally fair.\u00a0 But you blew this one bigtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg.com reports that the number of Federal employees delinquent on their taxes has “gone up 11.5%”.\u00a0 … Another “Sterling” Example of “Unbiased Reporting”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}