The litter in littérateur. Ricky Opaterny on Books, Music, Art, and Sports

10/16/2008

Joe the plumber is not representative

Filed under: General — Ricky @ 5:19 am

Of course, people are gullible, and the McCain campaign is seizing on that gullibility. But let’s get the facts straight here. From today’s Times: 

According to figures compiled by the Small Business Administration, there are fewer than six million small businesses that actually have payrolls. The rest are so-called nonemployer firms that report income from hobbies or freelance work done by their registered owners, earning as little as $1,000 a year.

So are there “millions more like Joe the Plumber,” as Mr. McCain contended? Probably not. Mr. Obama may well have been correct when he stated that “98 percent of small businesses make less than $250,000.”

Of these, according to a calculation by the independent, non-partisan Tax Policy Center, fewer than 700,000 taxpayers would have to pay higher taxes under Mr. Obama’s plan. But even some of these are not small-business owners in the traditional sense; they include lawyers, accountants and investors in real estate, all of them with incomes that put them in the top tax brackets.

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