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USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

usafacts.org

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Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#281

Post by chronic940 »

rqebmm wrote: post #250
amscanne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Say 4 of the high earners stop working as much (since their marginal rates are so high). I know you're just using this as an example, but it begs a question I've struggled with: is there any actual proof that marginal tax rates reduce productivity in high earners? On its face it makes perfect micro-economic sense, but that's like saying a cache will never miss or a cow is perfectly spherical. It just doesn't match…

> I recently joked with my dad "I guess I'm done trying now!" when I stopped qualifying for a certain tax credit after I'd negotiated hard for a nice raise.

If you are still talking about tax credits, you are no where near the top tax brackets. Note that income brackets extend to more than just your reported W-2s...

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#282

Post by s73ver »

Cshelton wrote: post #196
kbenson wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please explain how flat tax rate across any income level, while removing the current tax code, would be considered regressive? I have not heard that argument before. It's regressive in that it causes the poor to pay more than they do now. With regard to taxes, progressive and regressive have specific meaning. > The proportion of tax paid is the same at any income level. I don't believe this is true. You'll have to…

What I meant by the proportion of tax paid is the same at any income level is under a flat tax scenario, leaving out all tax rules today of exemptions/credits. If the rate is 10%, the proportion of tax is the same, whether you make $10 or $1 million, you are still paying 10% of your income. Yes, the effective tax rate collected. The reference you provided only supports my claim. It looks like the effective tax rate,…

Someone making $10 is going to miss 10% of that a lot more than someone making $100, and they're going to miss 10% of that a lot more than someone making $10,000. And someone making $1MM isn't likely to miss it at all.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#284

Post by KyleJune »

rqebmm wrote: post #250
amscanne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Say 4 of the high earners stop working as much (since their marginal rates are so high). I know you're just using this as an example, but it begs a question I've struggled with: is there any actual proof that marginal tax rates reduce productivity in high earners? On its face it makes perfect micro-economic sense, but that's like saying a cache will never miss or a cow is perfectly spherical. It just doesn't match…

Agreed, at a certain point money becomes less important. The amount of extra money the rich could make by continuing to work hard or by working harder is less of a motivational factor than it is for people in the lower and middle classes.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#285

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #142
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it extrapolate 25% lower values on all other years? If the 10th years are the actual data points, the computed trend line through only census years shouldn't be so radically different from the drawn markers. In any case, the differences are small in this instance over the long run The differences in those years are _huge_.

> The differences in those years are _huge_. They look similar to me. One has less granular data than the other. What exactly are you implying?

>They look similar to me.

Do a quick calculation for me, please.

What percent of 2 million is 500 thousand? Because the errors are 500 thousand on 2-2.5 million. That's a huge amount of error.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#287

Post by roenxi »

rqebmm wrote: post #250
amscanne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Say 4 of the high earners stop working as much (since their marginal rates are so high). I know you're just using this as an example, but it begs a question I've struggled with: is there any actual proof that marginal tax rates reduce productivity in high earners? On its face it makes perfect micro-economic sense, but that's like saying a cache will never miss or a cow is perfectly spherical. It just doesn't match…

Woah there! You've basically just claimed that the laws of supply and demand don't have an impact in the labour market. That requires more evidence than finding a link between pay and intrinsic motivation/job security.

Nobody is going to turn down a flat wage hike - but the damage of government tax policy is it shrinks the window of "what the company will pay for" and "what the worker will work for". Now we can't measure this for sure, but theory tells us it is a very likely, if not practically certain, outcome. The issue is you won't see it, because companies will just not be offering some jobs because they experimented and couldn't offer them at a wage that interested workers.

As a bonus, raises are a bit of an illusion. There is a huge amount of new money entering the system from somewhere (see https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/20170406/, about 5% p.a. increase). Most wage rises in theory are to balance that out so that you have enough dollars to call on the same real resources for hours of your labour.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#288

Post by s73ver »

grandalf wrote: post #244

By restricting the project to data provided by governments there is absolutely zero chance of much additional accountability being offered by this platform. I think all recipients of public funds should be required to account for all spending per hour, project and employee, and should also publish highly granular KPI and transactional data. I don't necessarily want to see a 10-K, I want access to google analytics, th…

That kind of accounting would drive up needed grants by at least 20%, or make it so that these NGOs wouldn't actually be able to do anything.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#289

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

logfromblammo wrote: post #276
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying doesn't match the reality of what is actually shown in the graph at http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 They aren't jumps suddenly correcting a bad estimate with new data. They are gigantic 25% spikes which are then immediately undone. There is no way to explain this chart by just saying that estimates worsen over time.

Depending on the estimate, the most recent census data might not be fully incorporated into the model until several years following the census? I can't look at your link at the moment because the corporate firewall is currently blocking the domain. But there really isn't any way to get around the fact that real census data are only collected once every 10 years (and the 1890 census was burned, so that point is missin…

When you can look at the links you'll see what I mean.

To give a description of the problem in text...

Both charts are labeled "Deaths", but I'm going to describe one of them for you.

The time span from 1981 to 1999 goes like this: 1,968,365 - 1,998,559 - 2,033,124 - 2,068,679 - 2,091,359 - 2,105,024 - 2,163,984 - 2,161,764 - [1,637,394] - [2,656,721] - 2,180,115 - 2,226,027 - 2,282,854 - 2,284,363 - 2,317,918 - 2,321,933 - 2,330,759 - 2,359,088 - 2,386,995

And then 2000 is [2,979,442]

And then 2001 is 2,430,225

And so on. Every 10 years, and also in 1989, there is a fluctuation by 500,000 deaths from the expected number given the surrounding trends.

All of the numbers that are _not_ between [] above look like a smooth upward trend, yeah? So WTF is happening in the three that have [] if the data isn't bogus? I say the data must be bogus.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#290

Post by hackuser »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #277
hackuser wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's just be happy that you can get some of this information today ... When else have HN users adopted that approach?: 'Let's just be happy with what we have, and not criticize.' These are constructive, very informative points; in fact, they may be the most informative in this discussion.

In the context of public spending data available anywhere, perhaps. As commentary on someone who just took $10M of their own money and created availability of data that didn't exist before? Not as useful. In re-reading both the USAFacts.org page and dandare's comment I really don't see how dandare's criticisms of what data USAFacts made available, what reports they made out of as _demonstrators_ of the data set, and…

> As commentary on someone who just took $10M of their own money and created availability of data that didn't exist before? Not as useful.

Hmmm ... the comment doesn't criticize or even mention Ballmer at all; it was only about the website. I don't think we should be granting some projects special status, above criticism, and we never have (with the possible exception of the exalted one, Elon Musk). For example, plenty of FLOSS developers have sacrificed far more than Ballmer - Theo de Raadt has given his entire career and put his entire reputation on the line, as one immediate example - and their projects are criticized all the time.

In fact, shielding the projects from criticism is a disservice to the project.

I'll say that one could read an undercurrent of jealously into it, but that is strictly between the lines and could easily be in the eye of the beholder.

> I really don't see how dandare's criticisms ... [are] at all helpful or relevant

That seems like an unhelpful stretch.

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