Keeping the choir in tune

Notice how Aaron keeps fooling the stupid on his weblog. Recently he published this post, showing how the estate tax spiked during the great depression as a percentage of federal receipts.

Notice how Frank and doinkicarus stupidly share the idea that somehow the estate tax is caused by or causing the Depression -- in violation of what any reasonable economist will say --- and he leads them on in the comments. Nice, huh?

But now look at total federal receipts --- say, here. Notice how low they go during the Depression! So in 1936 -- about where that "spike" is in the estate tax data --- federal receipts are about a tenth what they are in the late '40's --- but the estate tax fraction was actually down about three times. You'd expect some rise of course, since the estate tax is going to have a kind of wealth hysteresis and also because during the Depression a lot of the mechamisms used to avoid the estate tax became less attractive.

And that, boys and girls, is how you keep the sheep in tune! That's why Aaron's the Captain.