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Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

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Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#221

Post by mcculley »

baggy_trough wrote: post #175
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?

It's important to deal with reality as it is. Perhaps government is not always the best way to prevent poor people from starving to death.

The private charities that fill the gaps left open by government are another form of government, just not democratically elected.

(I realized I was contributing to that problem by donating to local charities.)

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#222

Post by citrin_ru »

noqc wrote: post #82

The author of the marathon paper explains the phenomenon he is observing, and then goes on to "reject that explanation" without attempting to do anything to control for it. >For example, the 2013 Chicago Marathon provided pace teams for 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, 3:15, 3:20, 3:25, 3:30, 3:35, 3:40, 3:45, 3:50, 3:55, 4:00, 4:10, 4:25, 4:30, 4:40, 4:55, 5:00, 5:10, 5:25, and 5:45.T he institution of pace teams then could provid…

There is one more reason for discontinuity around 4:00 - many amateur runners make a goal to run in 4:00 or less (hard but achievable) and reduce training intensity once they finished in 3:5x - 4:00.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#223

Post by richrichie »

inglor_cz wrote: post #212
richrichie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure. Yeltsin was “our guy”. He was feted by us, he even addressed the congress, etc. Until he was not when he refused to deliver Russia on a plate. Guys that are not “our guys” never win a legitimate election. Remember how integrity of elections were questioned when a guy that is not our guy won an election in 2016?

I am far from sure either, but Yeltsin had some "street cred" speaking for him. I remember the 1990s quite well, being a teenager with intense interest in politics. He got to power by organizing a folk uprising against an attempted coup by KGB generals Kryuchkov et al., who were hardliners and quite skilled people as well; they caught Gorbachev and held him hostage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_atte…

Good points.

It didn’t matter that Yeltsin was the most liberal of all. He did not roll over and play dead for NATO expansion and balkanisation projects. So he became a pariah overnight and was painted as an alcoholic and corrupt.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#224

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #217
JohnMakin wrote: post #18

I went to school at a relatively late age and started in community college. The school/state had a policy where any independent income earners making less than 35,000/year would not pay tuition. A single dollar over that would require paying full tuition of ~$60/unit or about $750 a semester. One year I worked a little more overtime during the holidays than usual and realized with a week to go in the year that I'd go…

>I have never understood why things like this don't use some sort of sliding scale, rather than absolute dividing line. Try translating your idea of a sliding scale into a piece of legislation which matches your intention.

Here’s my shot: Anyone may at any time declare a portion of their income to be “cliff income,” pay 40% percent tax on it to the feds and 20% to the state, and then keep the last 40% to do with as you please. All govt and private programs that measure income are required to disregard cliff income.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#225

Post by eru »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #215
Aerroon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with UBI isn't so much the politics, it's the feasibility of the cost. $12k a year over 300 million people is 80% of the US government's tax revenue. A negative income tax might work out a lot better on the numbers, but it won't help the people that need it the most (the ones that can't get a job). But hey, maybe it can work. The US has a deficit spending of $1.7 trillion in 2023, $1.4 in 2022, $2.7 in 20…

The cost is fiction because it's a tax credit. The money is on both sides of the ledger. If you're making $60,000/year and your pre-credit taxes go up by $12,000 and then you get a $12,000 tax credit, you have paid an additional zero dollars in taxes. If you don't make much money and the government used to pay you a net $10,000 in benefits and now you get a $12,000 UBI and pay $2000 in taxes, that hasn't actually cos…

> The cost is fiction because it's a tax credit. The money is on both sides of the ledger. If you're making $60,000/year and your pre-credit taxes go up by $12,000 and then you get a $12,000 tax credit, you have paid an additional zero dollars in taxes.

Yes, but marginal rates are important, too.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#226

Post by eru »

advael wrote: post #214
Aerroon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with UBI isn't so much the politics, it's the feasibility of the cost. $12k a year over 300 million people is 80% of the US government's tax revenue. A negative income tax might work out a lot better on the numbers, but it won't help the people that need it the most (the ones that can't get a job). But hey, maybe it can work. The US has a deficit spending of $1.7 trillion in 2023, $1.4 in 2022, $2.7 in 20…

This is nonsensical for numerous reasons 1. The federal government doesn't have tax revenue. It issues a currency and then taxes go toward countering inflation. The notion that a currency-issuing government needs to "balance its budget" in its own currency is a political fiction. Also, policies that benefit people at the lower end of the income spectrum disproportionately actually move money around in the economy, wh…

Your point (1) sounds like the same old 'modern monetary theory' that never amounted to anything. To quip, MMT is both novel and correct. It has both novel and correct parts (but no parts that are both).

See eg https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2021/Sumnermodernmo...

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#227

Post by LoganDark »

hammock wrote: post #23
JohnMakin wrote: post #18

I went to school at a relatively late age and started in community college. The school/state had a policy where any independent income earners making less than 35,000/year would not pay tuition. A single dollar over that would require paying full tuition of ~$60/unit or about $750 a semester. One year I worked a little more overtime during the holidays than usual and realized with a week to go in the year that I'd go…

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

That's an incredibly concise description of it, thank you.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#228

Post by zh3 »

There's also Poincare and the Bakery [0], which is quite possibly apocryphal but often told - esentially a departure from the normal disibution showing something odd going on.

I vaguely recall reading that the technique was used in the second world war to catch black marketers; if the distribution of weights of rationed items had a discontinuity near the weight limit, it was evidence that the seller was keeping the heavier portions back for private sales.

[0] https://houstonstatisticians.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/poinca...

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#229

Post by _xnmw »

I suspect the inconvenience and weirdness of dealing with a hard cut-off is easier than the complexity of dealing with some kind of continuous scale. Laws need to be, first of all, easily comprehensible so that all parties can plan accordingly. It's easy enough to plan to keep your income under $X, but hard to figure out the optimum benefit/income sliding scale and plan accordingly. The only other simple and fair option I can think of would be to implement a "judge" to issue approval on a case-by-case basis instead of a hard number.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#230

Post by duxup »

sircastor wrote: post #177
duxup wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed career paths post age 40 via a coding bootcamp. Despite being a terrible student when I was younger, I found had a great time learning, and I've really enjoyed my job ever since. I found myself in a strange position though, lots of services offered benefits to students, discounts, internships, storage / compute time etc. I was not enrolled in a traditional university (although they were administering it), a…

I finished my bachelors degree after I turned 40. I was a much better student than I’d been in my 20s or teens. My wife is friendly pursuing her bachelor’s and it is clear to both of us that universities are really just tolerant of non-traditional students. You won’t be treated poorly, but all of the infrastructure, tools, class progression, etc, is constructed around post-Highschool young adults. It’s been a while s…

I agree, there's a weird culture barrier almost at times.

My wife was in grad school and pregnant. Some of the instructors seemed completely confused on how to handle things. Others seemed to handle it in stride.

It's like there's an expectation that "you're relatively poor, young" and some other expectations that when that's not the case the system starts to fall apart.

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