MikeNovack wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2026 5:32 pm
You still don't get it -- were you never taught to go to PRIMARY SOURCES whenever possible.
Merely going to "primary sources" isn't enough. That's the point I was making. It's a matter of which "primary sources" one goes to, and which "primary sources" one doesn't include in one's calculation. Raw income is one "primary source." But so is "real estate values." "Tax rate" is another -- though difficult to assemble, in Canada, since they have not only income taxes, but gas taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, carbon taxes, civic taxes, provincial taxes...and compounded taxes upon the money they've already taxed. And then there's the fact that Canadian dollars are worth only a fraction of the American dollars, and aren't even the same currency. There's a lot to assemble in any such calculation: more than you can do, I'm quite certain.
All those are "primary data." All of them are obtained from "primary sources." But you can see very easily that numbers will swing radically, depending on which of the above "primary sources" you decide not to count. Meanwhile, I'm quite certain you didn't use primary sources yourself; your calculation appeared all to quickly and unproblematically, and without any of the above nuance.
However, on my side I have Jordan Peterson, Pierre Poilievre, and the Fraser Institute, among others. And you have...what you Googled or copied from what AI gave you, without even addressing the nuance, as above.
So you'll have to forgive me if I don't worry myself much about your exception-taking.