Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 294 posts

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#121

Post by philomath_mn »

Xcelerate wrote: post #4

Haha, I recall seeing a similar plot with a "suspicious discontinuity" when I looked up data on home appraisal price vs sale price. I remember asking the loan officer why the contract was forwarded to the appraiser before they did the appraisal, because that might bias their assessment. She gave me a funny look and replied "that's kind of the point."

Appraisals are such a joke. We had an appraiser say that my new construction was going to appraise at $100k under cost -- so my broker fired him, ate the fee, and hired an old friend of his instead. She gave us the number we needed and the deal closed.

Then again, the finished house then appraised at $50k _over_ cost 12 months later when I converted the construction loan, so maybe the first appraiser really was nuts.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#122

Post by BWStearns »

It's interesting how the marathon discrepancies mostly disappear at left and right of the curve (looking at 2:30 and 6:30). Presumably top runners are putting out 100% of sustainable effort the whole time so there's no reserve energy and the slowest are similarly doing all they can just to get the race done. The folks in the middle are the ones who are putting in something less than 100%.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#123

Post by madcaptenor »

jeffbee wrote: post #98
madcaptenor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might get some of that if rent is raised by percentage. When I started my current job my salary was an integer multiple of $10,000. I got a raise at the end of my first year that was an integer percentage (3%, IIRC) so my salary was then an integer multiple of $100. The following year I got a raise again (it might have been an integer percentage, I don't recall) and my salary was just some random-looking integer.…

Very true, but the graph I posted is initial leases only.

I see you said that in your link. Maybe I should read more carefully before making comments.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#124

Post by philomath_mn »

rhelz wrote: post #102

If you are upset about somebody not wanting to take that $50k a year job because it would cost them a subsidy, just wait until you hear about trust funds and inheritance!! If you think losing a $20k subsidy is demotivating, imagine inheriting $25 million. So instead of knuckling down and working hard to contribute their fair share, they are incentivized to just loaf. No telling the costs to society from these freeloa…

- Trust fund babies are far more rare than people making ~$50k

- Trust fund babies will not qualify for much government assistance

It is a net good for the economy and the individual if a person who is capable of making ~$50k does so within the workforce, rather than avoid improving their own life in order to qualify for assistance.

This is not a moralization of the use of government assistance, it is a criticism of the incentive structures within those assistance programs.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#125

Post by amanda99 »

hammock wrote: post #113
amanda99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main feature of that image is "childcare" which seems to be a fixed subsidy of $16k (and "CHIP", ~$4k related to child health care). I don't know what the former means and how these are calculated, but if you don't have children, this graph would look a lot less exciting.

The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda. Pennsylvania has a substantial program to pay for child care for many of its residents: https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Wo...

It is not: it's inspired by it.

If you look carefully, the numbers are different. In Gary's picture, the cliff is from $29k to $69k or so; the one above is much wider.

Also direct link:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.aei...

(It is funny though, the picture above seems to be very much from a serious libertarian.)

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#126

Post by mrguyorama »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #118
callalex wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of saying something like this? Would you prefer that people just not bother to do anything and let poor people starve to death instead?

The "starve the beast" propaganda has been wildly successful and is seeded deep in American culture and psyche.

"Vote for me and I'll show you how bad I can make government" has been supremely effective, somehow

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#127

Post by munificent »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #72

The worst one of these that affected me was money helping people in the 2008 housing crisis. qualifying was based on what percentage of your income your mortgage payment was. So I would have got it if I had made a little less money, or if i had bought a house I knew I couldn’t afford. It felt like being punished for making the right decisions.

This is like saying, "If only my house had been destroyed by a hurricane too, and then I would have qualified for that sweet FEMA money."

I mean, sure, but you were still better off to not have your house destroyed in the first place.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#129

Post by munificent »

toast0 wrote: post #46
lesuorac wrote: post #25

> It's generally believed that this is caused by a discontinuity in youth sports: > 2. Within a given year, older kids are stronger, faster, etc., and perform better I've seen a few youth ice hockey games and by god it's just unfair; there's a kid like a foot taller than the rest. I'm kind of surprised there isn't some system that buckets kids by size , it can't be fun for the small kids to get elbowed in the neck ev…

If you've ever played Nintendo's Ice Hockey (1988), it's super realistic, and the tradeoffs of big vs little are clear: little guys bounce off of big guys and big guys move slow. My kid is in 12U youth hockey and is a big guy, and yeah, smaller kids can often usually skate around him, but if they bump into him, they fall over, and often he'll get a "big kid penalty" which means he gets a break in the penalty box for…

> I don't think you can really just bucket kids by size and ignore age though... there's a lot of mental development between 10U hockey and 12U hockey, and putting a big 10 year old on the 12U team is often not right because the level of play is so much different, most 10 year olds won't keep up.

A friend of mine has a son who is giant for his age. The kid is 7 but he's the size of a late middle-schooler.

One of the things that ends up being really difficult for him is that everyone around him assumes that he should be smarter and more mature than he is. They inadvertently expect him to be mentally the same age as kids the same size as him. It sucks because it makes him seem developmentally disabled or emotionally unregulated. He's not! He's a totally normal seven-year-old. Just a really tall one.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#130

Post by heroprotagonist »

autoexec wrote: post #33
hammock wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An instructive image of the welfare trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Welfare_trap.png People making $30K on welfare would need to make $81K at an actual job to have the same income after tax. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap

Something seems very off with that image. I've known a lot of different people who were on welfare over the years, and not one of them had a standard of living anywhere close to what someone who nets $60,000 a year does. That said, there is absolutely a cliff where you could risk a loss just by taking in more money.

How much of that standard of living is based on credit, though? Credit is largely based on income. Housing, payment flexibility for amenities and vacations, big ticket purchases that reduce long-term costs, etc.

When 3/4 of those making less than 50k and 2/3 of those making less than 100k are living paycheck to paycheck, that extra flexibility influences quality of life quite a bit.

Quote (https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/living-paychec...):

   * Statistics vary, but between 55 percent to 63 percent of Americans are likely living paycheck to paycheck.


   * Three in four Americans who earn less than $50,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, compared to roughly two in three of those making $50,000 to $100,000.
Post reply on HN