I see this become apparent on social media every so often and it’s really just depressing how widespread the misunderstanding is.
51% of Americans who were polled in a 2021 survey agreed with the statement that “You pay your marginal tax rate on all of your income”.
Sometimes I feel stupid and then I remember that most Americans are functionally illiterate and barely know how to add two numbers much less do even basic calculus. Then I feel a little better.
Then I feel really bad again because what the fuck how is it 2024 and people can barely read.
Stream of thought time…
Season 1 of ST:TNG has a line from a child character maybe 10 or younger along the lines of “ahh dad do I gotta do my calculus homework it’s so boring” and his dad is all “we gotta all learn the basics son so yes you must do your calculus. But don’t worry you also get to do music.” I think about this line. Education should be improving. We should be learning more and more things as we learn to educate people. We should be able to take advanced math classes as basics because we know how to impart knowledge. This would of course ultimately apply to everything. We could play so much music. Learn to write such great books. And yet it’s just getting worse.
Anyway ya you’re right it’s crazy about marginal tax rates.
The “information age” has been such a misleading labeling of our time.
Disinformation age
but also unfortunately true. Pretty much any crackpot bullshit ideology can find its own microcosm of reinforcement now.
3Blue1Brown is that advancement in math. They create the most beautiful illustrations of math I’ve ever seen in my life by a wide margin.
I’ll have to check it out. I’ve been reminding myself why math is amazing again recently. Since I’m a weird nerd just doing derivatives is beautiful but seeing visual creativity in math is awesome. There’s so much there to do and definitely one reason people don’t like math and similar is the way it’s taught is so dry and formulaic.