What’s this? Art Woolf made a mistake?! In Wednesday’s Free Press, Candace Page reveals a slight miscalculation in the report filed at the end of 2009 by Douglas’ pet economists, Art Woolf and Richard Heaps.
Instead of increasing $241., the inflation-adjusted median income of Vermont couples filing joint tax returns actually fell $1,870. or 2.7 percent in 2008.
According to Woolf, the discrepancy came to light when he was
recently checking his calculations and discovered he had transposed two formulas.
The article goes on to say that Woolf thinks the corrected data “makes more sense.” Duh! Observed Mr. Heaps:
“Sometimes you just do something stupid.”
I will be the first to admit that any economic assertion by Art Woolf is likely to be received by me with skepticism; more especially because we are on opposite sides of an outstanding Act 250 appeal that involves, among other things, Walmart’s impact on local economies. Still, anyone might wonder on what fluffy cloud of disconnect Mr. Woolf reposed when he came up with the glaringly erroneous result and did not immediately question it. Being a longtime member of UVM’s economics faculty, surely Mr. Woolf knows that the first rule of math is to check your work!
I can’t resist the urge to speculate on what year-end decisions within the Douglas administration might have been influenced by this timely and remarkable discrepancy.
the more eggregious problem was their decision to define “families” as those who are married filing jointly; that is not the definition used by Census (households with those related by blood, marriage, or adoption)
by limiting it as they do every year, the numbers present a somewhat skewed perspective by excluding single parents (among others); and of course it completely excludes singles and households with unrelated people; the better measure is median household income
in any case, while I often (usually) disagree with Art & Dick, I’m sympathetic to the fact that it was an error (and reported when discovered); obviously, all of us number crunchers should double-check the math, but we’re human and we make mistakes
hey, at least he didn’t release any tritium by “mistake”