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Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

danluu.com

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#81

The marathon one has a simple - and fun - explanation: it’s great to run with people! Many (most?) marathons have pace runners who run the course, hewing to each 30 minute and 15 minute finish. So there’ll be a 3:30:00 pacer, a 3:45:00 pacer and so on. Your local pacer might even have their pace on their shirt and may even have a flag so they’re super hard to miss as you’re running. One friend of mine runs with a spe…

> One of the most common comments I've seen online about this graph and/or this paper is that this is due to pace runners provided by the marathon. Section 4.4 of the paper gives multiple explanations for why this cannot be the case, once again indicating that people tend to comment without reading the paper.

Note that this is about comments on the paper itself. Somebody reading this article could not reasonably be expected to have read the paper before commenting on it, not least of which because the link to it is dead (but also because reading a research paper before making a casual remark about a single graph in an article with many, wherein it is not remotely related to the main thesis of the article, is not a particularly reasonable expectation).

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#82

The marathon one has a simple - and fun - explanation: it’s great to run with people! Many (most?) marathons have pace runners who run the course, hewing to each 30 minute and 15 minute finish. So there’ll be a 3:30:00 pacer, a 3:45:00 pacer and so on. Your local pacer might even have their pace on their shirt and may even have a flag so they’re super hard to miss as you’re running. One friend of mine runs with a spe…

> One of the most common comments I've seen online about this graph and/or this paper is that this is due to pace runners provided by the marathon. Section 4.4 of the paper gives multiple explanations for why this cannot be the case, once again indicating that people tend to comment without reading the paper.

> https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/research/pdf/Web...

404 Not Found

Had you tried to read the paper, you’d have noticed the dead link.

How’s the wind up on your high horse?

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#83
There is a hilarious one in the Indian direct tax (Income tax) code right now:

If your (taxable) income is less than 7L (inr), no tax is assessed. If your income is greater than 7L, but upto 12L, tax is assessed, but a tax _rebate_ (a discount on payable tax) is granted for the exact amount of tax owed. This means net tax paid till 12L is zero. But if your income is 12L + 1, this rebate no longer applies, so the entire tax assessed (on the 7L+ income) is now due. This means that a person who earns 12L+1 INR makes ~70K inr less, post-tax, than the person who earns 12L INR.

After complaints, to correct this, they added another layer: If your taxable income is >12L but less than 12L+~70K (the tax thats due), then the maximum tax due is just the amount your income exceeds 12L bye. So you stagnate at the same post-tax salary from 12L to 12L+70K.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the most common comments I've seen online about this graph and/or this paper is that this is due to pace runners provided by the marathon. Section 4.4 of the paper gives multiple explanations for why this cannot be the case, once again indicating that people tend to comment without reading the paper.

> https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/research/pdf/Web... 404 Not Found Had you tried to read the paper, you’d have noticed the dead link. How’s the wind up on your high horse?

> Runners who were on pace to finish between 3:45 and 3:55 or between 4:05 and 4:15 ran approximately 6%–8% slower in the last 2.195 kilometers. In contrast, runners who were on pace to finish close to the 4-hour mark (3:55–4:02) ran only 4%–6% slower in the last 2.195 kilometers. [...] Panel (b) of Figure 7 zooms out to show this normalized pace for runners across a wider range of 40-kilometer-pace times. The same qualitative pattern around 4 hours is observed at other round numbers in the distribution. Thus, there is clear evidence that runners finish the last 2.195 kilometers relatively faster when they are close to a round number than when they are farther away.

From "Reference-Dependent Preferences: Evidence from Marathon Runners" https://devingpope.com/assets/files/Website_Marathons.pdf

Not sure why you think not making any effort to find the article beyond clicking a link is a flex, but ok.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the most common comments I've seen online about this graph and/or this paper is that this is due to pace runners provided by the marathon. Section 4.4 of the paper gives multiple explanations for why this cannot be the case, once again indicating that people tend to comment without reading the paper.

Note that this is about comments on the paper itself. Somebody reading this article could not reasonably be expected to have read the paper before commenting on it, not least of which because the link to it is dead (but also because reading a research paper before making a casual remark about a single graph in an article with many, wherein it is not remotely related to the main thesis of the article, is not a particu…

The quote is from the page in OP, its not necessary to circumvent the dead link to see the remark (not that finding the original article is very hard in any case).

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#86
post #3

The UK tax system also has a bunch of unfortunate cliffs, and tapers that create >60% marginal tax rates and worse. There's a calculator here that illustrates it well https://tax-cliffs.britishprogress.org/calculator The childcare cliff edge is probably the worst, but the personal allowance taper isn't ideal either as it's compressed over a relatively short income range And of course all the thresholds remain frozen,…

What's most infuriating it's only the job income , work, that's taxed like this. Passive income of any sort? Bribes from the lobbying groups? Absolutely not.

This is how you tell genuinely left-wing politicians from "free market progressives": look at whom they are trying to tax.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#87
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's most infuriating it's only the job income , work, that's taxed like this. Passive income of any sort? Bribes from the lobbying groups? Absolutely not.

This is how you tell genuinely left-wing politicians from "free market progressives": look at whom they are trying to tax.

Exactly.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this is about comments on the paper itself. Somebody reading this article could not reasonably be expected to have read the paper before commenting on it, not least of which because the link to it is dead (but also because reading a research paper before making a casual remark about a single graph in an article with many, wherein it is not remotely related to the main thesis of the article, is not a particu…

The quote is from the page in OP, its not necessary to circumvent the dead link to see the remark (not that finding the original article is very hard in any case).

Yes, I understand that the quote is from the article in the OP. The point is the quote is about people commenting on the paper. A comment on the article is not a comment on the paper, and it's entirely reasonable to leave a comment on the article without reading an auxiliary paper that is both not directly available and not relevant to the larger point of the article.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#89
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that normies cannot understand gradients or feedback loops is IMO the source of a large amount of "tactical-level" problems in society, particularly around healthcare, taxation, and politics. The better alternative would be to assume that normies are, in fact, capable of understanding these tools, and in the process forcing them to understand them by setting an expectation. I mean, this is what people should…

Given that normies don't geneally understand tax brackets, I can understand not wanting to do more complex stuff either. I don't know how many people I've heard express that they didn't want to move into the next tax bracket because they didn't want to pay that rate on their whole income, but it's a lot. A very small minority are worried about hitting a ceiling that removes eligibility for important services, and som…

Tax brackets are very easy to explain, it doesn't even require math beyond basic arithmetics. You can draw a bunch of lines on paper and show how different slices are taken from each.

The problem is that the intuitive understanding doesn't line up with that, so that's what people have by default - and then we don't teach how it actually works as a basic skill! Sure, there's no shortage of explainers, but you need to be actually looking for them in the first place.

And the best way to teach that in school? Give students a small allowance that grows with each year, but they have to "pay taxes" on it to continue receiving it, complete with different brackets etc. I bet you that all the "normie" kids will figure it out in no time.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities (2020)

#90
> someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year

Isn't donating to charity a lot easier than gambling on options? It's both legal and extremely easy to donate 5k to a tax-deductible charity of your choice...

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