User:Bkellett/sandbox

The Wikipedia article on negative income taxes needs certain revision. The article itself often lacks citations and verifiability, calling the accuracy of the information presented into question. Additionally, the article’s focus is too antiquated, failing to mention modern insights into negative tax systems, resulting in an imbalance of perspectives.

The article starts out on a particularly low note, as even the first citation, regarding the politician who initially described a negative income tax system, has a dead link. This reflects the content of much of the article, as verifiability of important information is often hard to come by throughout it. For example, the article’s description of the first large negative tax experiment done in the United States is one that is crucial not only to the “Implementation” section of the article, but to the “Criticism” section of the article as well. The problem with this is that the source of the studies provided is cited with another dead link, making it hard to confirm the accuracy of the information presented. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that the article presents the findings of these studies in the context of divorce. As the Wikipedia article itself recognizes that the relationship between negative income tax and divorce has been dismissed as a statistical error, it should instead focus on the study’s findings outside the context of marriage. This could be done by showing that the the negative income tax resulted in a 6 percent work reduction of men and the 12 to 17 percent work reduction in women, as done by a 1978 Washington Post article, instead of focusing on the 9 percent work reduction in husbands and 18 percent work reduction in wives, as done in the article. Such a change would improve the presentation of information that, though not technically inaccurate, now seems inappropriate.

Furthermore, updates to the article are necessary as it currently lacks detail on the negative tax systems in Israel and on statistical models that have been done to show the potential effects of negative tax systems in particular countries. This lack of updated information on the topic of negative income reflects a failure in neutrality, as the article focuses mainly on decades-old research and theory rather than introducing new insights and ideas on the topic. In addition to this flaw, the article’s attempts at neutrality are largely surface level. While the article maintains a neutral tone, presents arguments as ideas and ‘theories’ rather than facts, and supplies a variety of models of negative income tax in addition to a criticism section, much of the neutrality is superficial. In reality, the “Criticism” section mentions only one of several common criticisms of negative tax systems, neglecting issues such as potential for fraud, increased welfare expenditures, and problems with implementation. Additionally, the presentation of the two models of negative tax systems mentioned is flawed as the explanation of the second model is weakened by a complete lack of citations, again making the article less neutral than it appears to be.

Thus, the Wikipedia article largely failed tests for both accuracy and neutrality, as a lack of citations where they were needed, and links that were broken where they were provided, made it hard to achieve any level of confidence in the content of the article.