It confirmed something that everybody knew;
Countries with lower taxes grow faster than countries with higher taxes.
Correlations came in around -.3.
What got me about this data is that very few Republicans, Libertarians and other varied sorts of capitalists knew of this data and would largely rely on anecdotal evidence to support capitalism as the optimal economic system. Sure, they'd use logic. Or cite the utter and dismal record of communism in the glory days of Stalin, Chairman Mao, or modern day Kim Small Jong Il. But never really went out to see, "well, what tends to happen when countries are taxed at a higher rate."
Anyway, so I updated the figures with the most recent OECD data and, well, yeah, communism still sucks. Sorry dems and libs. When you argue against the truth, well, it's uhh...kind of hard to win.
Cripes Jensen! It's been like 10 years since i took stats and my subscription to mini-tab ran out in '95. I'm sure it's not statistically significant, there's only 27 or so data points. That being said, that's all the data that we have to run such a correlation. Out of the 176 countries, only the OECD has reliable and long enough data to run those correlations
ReplyDeleteOk, so I dusted off my old college stats book and looked up P-value.
ReplyDeleteThe data set for the first chart has a p-value of .49. Not statistically significant.
I'll have to check the outlier on that one later. It could be Slovakia, although I think it's probably Ireland.
I used a t-test calculation (used to know this stuff much more thoroughly in my youth). I was under the impression a P-value of .49 would be the cumulative of the two tails?
ReplyDeleteWhy are liberals such sticklers about confidence intervals and statistical significance when it comes to proving capitalism works, but not when it applies to second hand smoke and cancer rates?
ReplyDeleteIn general I would speculate because it advances their cause and is to their benefit.
ReplyDeleteHowever in OneLiberal's case, he knows enough about stats I'd speculate he's pursuing a masters/doctorate in sociology or something akin to that. I'd also speculate that OneLiberal is not necessarily the brainwashed fool you might make him out to be, but perhaps a liberal that actually takes the time to research the stuff first...which would be the first one I've ran into and which would also guarantee he'd inevitably turn into a capitalist.
Ah Sigma Six.
ReplyDeleteYou will join the Dark Side.
Sincerely glad to have you aboard. I think you're the only liberal in the joint...matter of fact you're the only liberal I know that has a mathematical background at all.
ReplyDelete