Liberal logic. It’s tough to find a place to begin, but today we’ll target the Achilles heel of all of their arguments: statistics. The left promotes some strong narratives around racism and wealth equality. We’ll tackle both and look for logical consistency among these liberal arguments. Here’s a spoiler: there is none.
Police Violence
You’re probably sick of hearing liberal arguments about police violence and racism. But, for the sake of argument, we have to revisit their claims. Here are the raw numbers. The most recent year with complete data is 2015. In that year, the police had 1502 fatal encounters with citizens. Of those, 732 were white, 381 were black and 382 were listed as “other.”
By these numbers, 72 percent of police killings 48.7 percent were of white people while 25.4 percent were black. These are the statistics that liberals use to say that black Americans are twice as likely to be killed by the police as any other group. If you’re confused by that conclusion, it’s because you have a basic understanding of how probability works.
Regardless, the left justifies their statements by comparing the statistics you just read to population distribution. America is 72 percent white and 12.7 percent black. Since there are five times as many white people as black, liberals assume that police shooting statistics should mirror that distribution.
As a side note, anyone with any European or Latino heritage is considered white in the census and as part of the 72 percent statistic. For police shootings, ethnicity is calculated differently and white and Latino individuals are counted separately. There’s a lot we could say about this liberal argument already, but instead we’re going to change gears for a minute and look at tax structure.
Tax Burden
Tax distribution is quite a bit more complicated than police statistics, and the most complete year we can use for comparison is 2013. According to that data, the top 10 percent of Americans by income earn 45 percent of all income in the country. That group pays 70 percent of all taxes. On the other end, the bottom 50 percent of income earners pull in 11 percent of all wages and pay 3 percent of all taxes.
It’s even more skewed with the top 1 percent who earns 19 percent of income and pays 38 percent of taxes. When you consider that roughly half of the entire federal budget comes from individual taxes and the other half comes from payroll and corporate taxes, you find that the top 1 percent is paying 33 percent of the entire federal budget.
You can see how lopsided these metrics are already. In the first place, top earners are paying far more than their statistical fair share of taxes. This doesn’t need to be inflated by any math tricks, but we’ll keep in mind that the bottom tax group is five times as large as the top, so by liberal math, they should be expected to pay five times the share of taxes that is seen at the top.
Violence against the Police
Here’s where the argument really heats up. In 2016, 135 police officers were killed. Since there are roughly 900,000 law enforcement officers in the country, cops are 32 times more likely to be killed by citizens than the other way around. In those shootings, the perpetrator has a 50 percent chance of being black.
A few more statistics to consider are that black police officers are 3.3 times more likely to fire their gun at a crime scene than any other group of cops, and this number elevates when they deal with black Americans.
Drawing Conclusions
Ok. Let’s put this all together. If we concede to liberal logic and admit that American police are racist and that it is the only reason for the racial distribution of killings, then that logic leads to a few inevitable conclusions. First, police racism is being lead by black police officers. If their numbers are subtracted then the distribution is nearly fixed. Second, the war on cops is 32 times more serious and dangerous as an issue and it is solely caused by the racism of black Americans.
On a lighter but still serious note, wage discrimination is far more extreme than racism. Wealthy Americans are targeted with 45 times their due tax burden, and that excludes corporate and payroll taxes.
There are only two possibilities. Either you can concede that liberal logic isn’t rooted in real data and measurement, or you can acknowledge that racism is lead by black Americans, the war on police is far more dangerous than police shootings and that wealthy Americans face unfair discrimination. Neither outlook is good for the left.
~ American Liberty Report
