Bankers question my math also. One could say perhaps 90% of people question my math. The 10% of people who don't question my math probably understand, and concentrate on the result, not the process. Because if the process (math) was flawed, the result would be different.
It's like a financial advisor who thinks stock options are risky. Even Warren Buffet says this, even though he lies, and had been caught lying.
He had that small incident with silver futures that he buried in a footnote in one of his annual reports. And he most certainly sell puts to lower his cost of entry, and this is somewhat disclosed, to the extent he needs to.
People overspend on things, and bankers like this. Then they insure these things, that generally depreciate in value. But they will not do simple things like insure their portfolios with VIX calls.
People use social media at work, which is essentially theft of their employer's time. They do some Christmas shopping on Black Friday. But apparently they aren't internet savvy enough to log onto their 401k accounts and occasionally rebalance.
People don't understand tax bracket, tax rate, effective tax rate, gross income, adjusted gross income, modified adjusted gross income and taxable income.
People don't understand state taxes, sale's taxes, excise taxes, fuel taxes etc.
How would we go about solving this problem so people don't try to make factual points using anecdotes?
I think we could start by eliminating withholding. Make everyone write a check on April 15th. Now that would be interesting, becuase a certain percentage would not be able to come up with the money. And included in that percentage would be people giving financial advice, lending money etc.