2025 Massachusetts state employee payroll master list: ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’ ⁠6%

By Joe Dwinell⁠3% Isabelle Friedman⁠0%

1/7/2026, 8:51:51 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 7 faulty reasoning types, including Primacy Effect, Availability Heuristic, and Negativity Bias, with Sunk Cost Effect as the most egregious example at 11.9% saturation with 20 hits. Analysis detected 93 faulty-reasoning hits from 168 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 22.4% and a BS Rank of ⁠6% (20,569 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.00% of the article peer group.

The Herald is back for the 19th year of the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” payroll and database rolling report. 
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And, here’s what we reported first (below). 
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* Top 1,000 Massachusetts public payroll earners 
* Boston’s city payroll for 2025 
* $6.6B pension payroll for 2025 
* Top Massachusetts state employee earners in 2025 
* UMass complete 2025 payroll 
* Massachusetts State Police 2025 payroll 
* Gov. 
Maura Healey’s 2025 office payroll 
* Massachusetts governor races to reclaim buyout from fired aide in cocaine case 
* Last year's “Your Tax Dollars at Work” main page 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 3.0%Confirmation Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.7%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 7.7%Joe Dwinell: 2.0%bostonherald: 4.0%Availability Heuristic7.7%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 2.5%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.5%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.8%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 7.1%Joe Dwinell: 3.6%bostonherald: 8.4%Framing Effect7.1%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.8%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 11.9%Joe Dwinell: 3.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect11.9%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 3.4%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.1%Pessimism Bias0.0%This article: 7.7%Joe Dwinell: 3.9%bostonherald: 5.0%Negativity Bias7.7%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 2.2%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.0%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.6%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.5%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.0%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 2.2%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 11.9%Joe Dwinell: 3.0%bostonherald: 0.7%Primacy Effect11.9%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.6%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Straw Man0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 3.7%Appeal to Authority0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.7%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.1%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.4%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 2.0%bostonherald: 2.7%Hasty Generalization0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.6%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 8.3%Appeal to Emotion0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.4%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 2.0%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.3%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.5%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.7%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.3%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.0%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.2%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.7%Unattributed Quote0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.8%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 8.8%bostonherald: 2.0%Biased Writer Voice0.0%This article: 4.8%Joe Dwinell: 1.2%bostonherald: 0.4%Indoctrination4.8%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 1.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Joe Dwinell: 0.0%bostonherald: 0.5%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 4.2%Joe Dwinell: 3.8%bostonherald: 0.2%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…4.2%

168 words analyzed.

Speakers

No attributed speakers were identified in this analysis.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.