The Washington Post published a misleading September 23 op-ed under the headline “Five myths about millionaires.” In the piece -- which is based on the false premise that President Obama is proposing a “millionaires tax” -- author John Steele Gordon knocked down straw-man arguments, used inconsistent data, and repeated conservative misinformation, all in a way that leaves the false impression that Obama is being misleading about his tax plan.

The problems with the piece begin in the first sentence. Gordon wrote, “This past week, President Obama tried to sell his new 'millionaires' tax' to the Rust Belt.” This is false. While it's true that Obama was in Ohio this weekend, he didn't try to “sell his new 'millionaires' tax” because he has proposed no such tax. Gordon is attributing to Obama a policy proposal that he hasn't put forth.

Gordon's first two myths are that "[m]illionaires are rich" and "[m]illionaires think they're rich." His evidence that these “myths” are false is that “there has been so much wealth creation” in the last 30 years that a millionaire can't make the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Beyond that, he pointed to surveys of wealthy people showing that they don't feel “rich.”

Of course, regardless of people's perceptions of their relative standing in the American economy, the fact is that having a million dollars in income placed a person in the top one-fifth of 1 percent of American taxpayers in 2009. It means having nearly 20 times the median household income in this country. Pundits can argue about whether or not that counts as “rich,” but they can't argue about those numbers.

In describing these two “myths,” Gordon misdirected his readers, using a bit of sleight of hand in how he defines a “millionaire.” In the first myth he defined a “millionaire” as someone with "$1 million in the bank." In the second, a millionaire is someone with "$1 million annual income." Gordon wrote that “only 22 percent” of affluent Chicago households surveyed in 2008 “thought a nest egg of $1 million was rich.” Of course, a million-dollar “nest egg” and a million-dollar income are two very different things, yet Gordon conflated the two.

Gordon's third myth is that "[m]illionaires pay proportionately less income tax than poorer people." Gordon cited Obama's September 19 speech advocating for the Buffett Rule and suggests Obama's “math may be off.” While it's certainly true that on average a million-dollar earner pays more federal income tax than a middle-class worker, there were more than 1,400 million-dollar earners who paid no federal tax at in 2009, and according to the Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis, there are more than 22,000 who paid less than 15 percent of their income that year.

For his fifth “myth” -- “Obama's 'millionaires' tax' won't seriously limit investment” -- Gordon employed false talking points to knock down a straw man. As stated above, the idea that Obama has proposed a “millionaires tax” is itself a myth. Gordon repeated the false talking point that "[t]axes on the rich are taxes on people who create jobs." He also claimed that the Bush tax cuts increased federal revenue; that's also false.

He further claimed that “unemployment declined by a third in the four years after the Bush tax cuts were full implemented in 2003,” the implication being that the two are linked. But Gordon is comparing the rate of unemployment at the low point of a business cycle to its rate at the peak of the cycle -- higher revenue and lower unemployment would be expected regardless of tax rates. Applying Gordon's analysis to the 1990s, when tax rates were at pre-Bush levels, unemployment hit a peak at 7.9 percent and bottomed out at 3.8 percent -- a far steeper drop than under the Bush tax regime.