It should be realized that the Nation has a deep aversion to articles containing tables or graphs.
It should not be surprising, in this light, that BE can write an article reflecting gross innumeracy.
I'm reminded of a reference in a Nation article long ago. Somebody had written an ignorant article criticizing public choice theory. (It is possible to write a learned one criticizing it, but that's another story.) In response to a reader's objection, the reply cast aspersions on cold-hearted mathematics and the analysis of politics by use of a calculator.
> the right. The federal government of 1997 is a very different creature
from that of, say, 1977--more egregiously corrupt and sycophantic toward
wealth, more glaringly repressive and even less responsive to the needs of
low- and middle-income people. . . . >
What's the metric, one wonders, in vain, for any of these comparisons?
>
> . . . For me that point [where government could be imagined as
marginally useful -- mbs] was passed with the repeal of welfare in 1996,
after which I could no longer imagine that my federal taxes served any
compassionate function--or, more generally, that the government plays any
redistributive role other than to promote the ongoing upward redistribution
of wealth.>
If she looked at a table once in a while, she might have a clue.
> . . . The power to levy taxes, for example, is increasingly deployed to
tithe low- and middle-income people to subsidize the state functions--such
as corporate welfare and the military--favored by the corporate elite. >
More unquantified nonsense.
BE can't count.
MBS (who can)