The Biggest Lies Around

Answer this question: have you heard that the net worth of the Walton family (which owns Walmart) is higher than the combined net worth of the lowest 30% of the country? This "truth" is resurfacing again in the latest efforts of the Democrats to attack the successful in America. According to the left, income inequality is so severe that just a few people have more than close to 100 million others.

Now answer another question: consider a first year lawyer who just started his full time legal career last September. This young lawyer makes $175,000 per year plus benefits working for a large law firm in New York. The young lawyer, however, has school debt of $35,000 from college and law school and has not yet been able to save anything from his income. Is this lawyer poor? Indeed, in any universe would this lawyer making close to $200,000 counting benefits be considered poor? The answer is clearly a resounding NO!

Of course, the 30% of the population that supposedly has less net worth than the Walton family includes this lawyer. After all, this fellow has a negative net worth. It also includes a family that bought a house for $300,000 in 2008 with a down payment of $30,000 and a mortgage of $270,000. The house is now worth only $250,000, so the family with no real savings also has a negative net worth. This is so even though the husband and wife together have an income of $185,000 per year. They are not poor, but they are included in that 30% whose net worth is less than that of the Waltons.

In other words, the claim about the Walton family compared to the net worth of others is only accurate because it distorts reality. It never considers the income of the folks involved. It only looks at net worth after all loans are first used to reduce that net worth. It is lie number 1.

Lie number 2 of the Left's top 10 is that the USA only has 2% of the world's oil reserves. It is a blantant lie which I have explained many times on this site.

Lie number 3 on the Obamacrat hit parade is this howler: Barack Obama actually raised federal spending less than any other recent president. This lie first assigns all of the major spending initiatives under Obama like the Stimulus to Bush. There is no reason to do this other than to manipulate the numbers. Even so, Obama himself is out telling this whopper to the press.

Lie number 4 is the amazing claim that Obama is a "better friend to Israel" than any past president. I find this lie so galling that it annoys me too much to explain why it is false.

Lie number 5 from Obama is that the Stimulus worked. That's right, but for the stimulus things would be so much worse. True, things suck at the moment. The economy is growing at an incredibly slow pace and unemployment is not down yet to 8%, the level that Obama promised would never be reached if the stimulus were passed. So what. The Obamacrats can tell us that things would have been worse but for the stimulus. They want us all to ignore reality and just accept their word. After all, they have been so honest in the past!