An illustrative example

I overheard two wingnuts discussing taxes as I was having a coffee at the botanic garden this morning. One said that on a $50 million profit, even a tax increase of one tenth of one percent(at this point he paused and you could see little gears spinning behind his eyes), which would be $500,000, could seriously harm business in this country.

Well, the little gears started spinning behind my eyes. I'm not a math wiz, so I started with 1 percent of $100 equals one dollar, then one percent of $1000 equals $10, until I eventually worked my way up to one tenth of one percent of $50 million is $50,000. That's $50,000 not $500,000.

I think that's just about right. The difference between $50,000 and $500,000 quite tellingly illustrates the vast chasm that separates wingnut beliefs from reality.

Update: Fixed my embarrassing math error. I knew the formula, just got confused about how many zeroes are in $50 million.