Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:00, 6 November 2012

Usage on the English Misplaced Pages

I removed this image from a number of articles. Given that it was created and originally added to the articles by Cupco (talk · contribs), who was subsequently banned for being the sockpuppet of a user that was banned for tendentious editing, I didn't think its removal would be controversial. But it was reverted, and a discussion started here.

While posting a newly-created graph showing the correlation between two different variables is not disallowed, it does imply there's a relationship between them. Even more so when the caption includes the comment "Employment has grown with higher top marginal tax rates." In the case of these two variables, it might indeed be that a higher top income tax bracket causes the employment rate to grow. It might also be that high rates of employment growth causes the government to raise taxes on high earners. It could also be that both could be attributed to a common third cause, such as a demographic dividend, the post–World War II economic expansion, or something else entirely. It could also be that the two are totally unrelated, and the appearance of a link is due to the comparatively low number of datapoints. Either way, it would be novel synthesis for us to draw (or imply) any conclusion as to which of these is the proper interpretation of the data. Any such conclusions (whether explicit or implicit) must be thoroughly sourced to reliable sources.

While not strictly prohibited by any policy or guideline, it is highly inappropriate to include such a graph without a properly sourced commentary in either the caption or article text discussing what conclusions we might (or ought) to draw from it. The articles I removed the graph from were lacking in this regard. Some of them were discussing the consequences of taxes on employment (as mentioned here), but were referring to the corporate tax rate, instead the effective top rate of income tax that this graph uses.

For example, the graph given in Flying Spaghetti Monster#Pirates and global warming certainly has a place on Misplaced Pages, but it would be disingenuous to include it in our articles on pirates or global warming without discussing how they are related. That's what I meant by correlation does not imply causation. Gabbe (talk) 09:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what's going on with which refers to a report with a different graph but with a title and serveral sections which supports the disputed historical implication explicitly. Given and I think this discussion should continue at Talk:Economics#Unemployment and effective tax rate. Paum89 (talk) 10:09, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

That lower top marginal tax rates do not lead to increased employment but rather the opposite is backed up by solid statistical data. Here is an article in the New York Times by economists at UC Berkeley who have analysed state and national employment data stating this conclusion: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/tax-cuts-for-job-creators/. The implied conclusion of the graph is based on solid analysis and the statement that "correlation does not imply causation" can be easily thrown around in the social sciences to shut down any conclusion. It is not clear to me that any result in economics cannot be nullified with the possibility that "correlation does not imply causation". Guest2625 (talk) 12:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)