Bush-Obama Tax Cuts

Similar to the Bush-Obama war on terror and the Romney-Obama health care plan.

That's what we have now.  The piddly shit top-end bit notwithstanding.  Obama seems to wish in his heart of hearts that Democrats were all more like Republicans.  As for the "liberals" who are either cheering or at least not fuming about this: you are a major part of the problem. 

One year and 5 year extensions on some good things in exchange for making the Bush tax cuts permanent is not a good trade off.  Extending the lower rates for another 5 years would have been a better deal.  Going over the cliff, blaming Republican intransigence and then negotiating a new tax cut would have been better politics.

Overweight and Healthy

There is a new study out saying that people who are slightly overweight (not obese) live longer than those who are not overweight.  It isn't really a surprising finding to me, nor is the reaction to it.  In particular it was pretty offensive to hear the [Harvard] doctor on NPR flat out rejecting the study as garbage. 

Scientists (as well as MD's) do, in fact, trash other scientists' work and findings.  Usually this happens when one scientist publishes something that directly refutes an other's work and findings.  This initial reaction is not meaningfully different than the way politicians react to the other side, and it is damaging to research overall...particularly in a time when an overlarge number of people are already inappropriately skeptical about science. 

The proper response (and the one that the doctor on NPR should have taken) was to say something like: "The study offers some interesting data, and it would be good to go further to look at possible specific cause and effects."

Having more or less body fat isn't really a "cause" of much of anything.  It highly correlates with quite a few medical issues (heart health, diabetes, ...), but it is this correlation that is the reason it is used as an indicator, and that is fine.  Just because correlation doesn't equal causation doesn't mean we should ignore correlation as indicators. 

By the same token, with respect to this study, if people who live longer are more likely to be a little overweight than not, then that could be an indicator that either something has changed in the environment, that something is up with our society, or that the measure of overweight is not as good as it should be.  That should be taken seriously, and obviously the Harvard doc doesn't take it seriously.

Why the American People Can't Win

Despite the fact that Republican policies (and actual Republicans) are deeply unpopular with the American people, we nevertheless get "deals" that are very Republican-policy heavy.  It shouldn't be that way and there are lots of little things that add up to get this result (a pretty good rundown in this piece).  The short of it is that Republicans are much better at the game of politics than Democrats.  If that doesn't change then neither will our political results.

Unfortunately it really can't change in large part because people who support Democrats are [generally] offended by the way that Republicans play the game, and so if Dems were to do the same, a fair number of people, who are already hard to get to the polls, would be even less inclined to participate, making it easier for Republicans to win (even when they lose). 

In order to unwind the problems in our politics, Democrats would have to act (a lot) more like Republicans, but people hate the way Republicans act (particularly supporters of Democrats).  It's a catch-22.

Note: If you want to know if you are one of those people there is a pretty easy test: how do you feel about Nancy Pelosi?  If you like her, you support stronger Democrats, if you don't then, like it or not, you support the crap situation we are in.

This is Tricky

So if a [chain] restaurant messes with tips in such a way as to pay more people the $2.13 minimum for tipped staff, it is evil and wrong, but if a coop does it, that's just fine and they are good?!?

It seems to me that they could just pay all staff minimum wage, still accept tips and then split those up (along with some other profit share).  I mean, it isn't illegal for a (full) minimum wage employee to also get tips.  Just look at coffee shops, or Oregon/California/anywhere else where the state has mandated everyone gets at least the state minimum wage.  Is it illegal for them to pool the tips and divide it among all if they are not using that as a loophole to pay employees less? 

I'm sure that there is more to the laws than that of which I am aware, but it seems to me that there is a simple solution here, and no-one should be bitching/cheering for low paid employees.

Odd, Liberal Policy Makes the Deficit Smaller

Oh, and the economy bigger...

I only selected the most liberal positions [available] and got a huge boost in the economy and a budget surplus in 3 years.  Weird.  Hell, even if I keep the defense spending where it is I get surpluses. 

Yes, there are conservative positions in there too, but they don't boost the economy or cut the deficit by as much, and they hurt the poor while benefiting the rich (including defense contractors).

Note: letting all the Bush tax cuts expire--though keeping the wage tax cut and all the stimulus spending, incl. tax cuts--has a large effect.  I also got rid of all the allowed tax deductions, raised the gas tax, implemented carbon tax, added a public option, sped up the health care excise tax, and raised the SS taxes as much as it allowed.  I ignored the 15% tax expenditure thing, mostly because I ended the other deductions, and want to encourage the rich to donate to charity at higher levels.

On the other hand, if you select all the conservative options, the economy recovers more slowly, and you are still running deficits at the end of the timeline (2021). 

The biggest "conservative" item is probably the VAT, which is only conservative, in that it is a regressive tax.  Some liberals kind of like VATs because they are more behind the scenes and people have notions (delusions) that they can be increased and made more progressive more simply than income taxes.  Without the VAT, however, the "conservative" options lead to higher deficits than current law (which is something that all smart people already know).

Asked and Answered:

Another horrible gun tragedy and representative CNN commenter asks:

If this person didn't have a gun you honestly believe he wouldn't have found a way to hurt someone?

Ok, first, obviously, this question is stupid on it's face as "hurt someone" is somehow supposed to be as bad as "killing many people including many children"?  How much of a heartless ass do you have to be to even posit that?  Don't answer.  Instead let's rephrase:

If this person didn't have a gun you honestly believe he wouldn't have found a way to [kill a bunch of people including lots of children]?

This one is easy: "Yes, yes I do."  Okay, are there really people out there who are so stupid to believe that if this person had shown up with a knife that the results would have been the same?!?

Then there are the people who believe arming the teacher(s) would fix this, which assumes 1) that the teachers would all think bringing a loaded gun into a classroom was a good idea and 2) that in such a situation having civilians with handguns shooting also would somehow make things better.

Gun advocates are simply insane/idiotic/evil/all-of-the-above. 

Hear Hear!

I support solar panels for everyone. 

Yea But Not Just That

Atrios' answer to Paul Waldman's question is correct, but there is actually a meaningful economic point to being more concerned about marginal rates than just total tax bill.  The reasoning is incentives, and the idea is sound enough, but it is just really stupid to apply it to the US and our current tax code.

Basically, if someone pulling in $500k/year and paying $130k in taxes works a bit harder, and makes an extra $50k, then the extra taxes are (essentially) that times their marginal rate and that's it.  If you adjust things so that their taxes go up to $200k, but their marginal rate remains exactly the same, then their incentive to work harder and make more is unchanged.  If, on the other hand, you keep the loopholes, but increase the marginal rates to offset the same difference, now, the incentive to working and earning more has been reduced (possibly by a lot).

The problem with this argument in the US is that the incentives are already very backwards.  As much as the federal income tax is progressive, most state taxes are flat to regressive, same with city, and wage taxes are--by virtue of SS not applying to anything over $106k--regressive.  On top of that many social insurance programs provide diminishing benefits as income increases, which sets up some points where the effective marginal tax rate exceeds 100%, and that is all at lower incomes.  The result of all this is that marginal effective rate is pretty flat (~40%) for everyone except the very poor (where effective marginal rates are near 100%) and the very wealthy (where it is 15%).

An extreme show of the negative incentives at low income is in the chart below, where a single mom with $29k in income has to more than double that to regain the same standard of living.

I would like to note that the presentation that comes from (PA sec of public welfare) is, despite this very nice graph, not really good.  The problem with our tax and transfer programs is that they are very complex, and feature abrupt ends to many benefits.  But this is the case because the better (simple, gradually diminishing benefits that leaves no cliff) solution is not politically viable.

A simple cash transfer program through the tax code would be great, but people have strong objections to giving no-strings-attached money to [poor] people.  So we have to give food stamps (that can't be used to buy clothing/housing) and then a housing program (that doesn't help with health care) and then a special insurance program...  On top of that they have hard cutoffs, because "clearly someone making $x per year doesn't need help with [y]" but since non-heartless, non-assholes want to provide as much help as possible, that assistance is provided right up to the cutoff (also, with something like medicaid, it is really hard to taper it off without making it insanely complex...and without being a total prick). 

Mark Bittman Doesn't Understand Farming

Another infuriating article by Mark Bittman.  Ok, yes, herb-, pest-, fung-icides are bad and dangerous and can cause problems myriad.  But organic farmers also use herb-, pest-, fung-icides, just "organic" ones.  These are not as well tested, they are in some cases known to be more toxic than the non-organic versions (I linked this before but am too lazy to find it now), and they have much less regulation attached to them.  Since they tend to be less potent they also must be applied in larger quantities.

So, no, switching from standard to organic doesn't necessarily improve your health prospects, and it may reduce them.  It does reduce your exposure to "chemicals" but we don't know what the trade-off is, and we don't know if it is better or worse.

The sustainable/natural agriculture movement in this country is very frustrating from a scientific point of view.  The hysteria surrounding things like GMOs and conventional farming is damaging to the prospects of sustainable/healthy agriculture.

Housing Recovery

On one side there are vast sums of money to be made in housing.  On the other the time scale is still too long for most investment types, particularly larger scale, so something like buying cheap houses, renting them for a few years, then selling them to realize huge capital gains is a really smart strategy.

I just don't think it will go as well as the bankers think.  If an individual wants to buy and manage 2 or three renal properties themselves, that can work (easier in some cities than others).  If a block of investors wants to buy and manage an apartment complex and/or a neighborhood worth of houses (well concentrated) then that can work.  But if a huge investment group wants to buy and manage dozens to hundreds of homes in disparate locations across the country?  That's a disaster waiting to happen.

The problem is location and distribution of profits.  One person can manage a small number of houses, provided all profits are going back to that one person.  An investment company, however, needs to be profitable while paying someone a salary to manage those houses.  This is normally done in rental markets with volume.  An apartment complex allows a small number of people to manage maybe hundreds of units.  Even accounting for empties this isn't too hard to manage a profit with. 

That same handful of people can't manage houses located hundreds of miles apart in different cites/states.  Also, you can't really cut back on management in such a way that 100 properties have the same total management costs.  So now the cost of management goes up by 10-fold, and it is that much harder to be profitable.  It isn't impossible, and come sale time, could still result in lots of money, but to manage the properties in the meantime probably means an operating loss for the investment company.

"Franchising" out the rental properties may be a solution to prevent/minimize losses without sacrificing management of properties (individuals bid on managing properties and get to take all the income from said properties over a 5 year period...think you can manage an average profit $700/month over 5 years, maybe you'll pay $12k upfront to do so).  This doesn't really do much for upfront investors, however, and so it seems very likely that poor to non-existent management will happen in many cases (I'm pretty sure that tenants being treated horribly is Atrios's fear here).

Revolving Credit Mystery (to me)

I'm sure someone knows, but if someone routinely charges $1500/month on his credit card and pays it off entirely each month, does that count as debt and savings?  I'm sure it all works out in the wash, but I am curious nevertheless.  If someone else charges $500 a month and pays it all off does she somehow get noted as saving* less since she is paying off less "debt" each month?

I guess I really want to know about how the balances work.  I'll be charging more this month than next, but because of that I will pay off more next month than this.  Because the charging and the payment are in different months, do I get noted as running net savings/debt in given months based on that.  If I were to increase spending each month by 0.5% would that show as me constantly increasing my debt load even though I am paying it off every month? 

Also, would I know the answers if I actually read the whole report?

*paying off debt counts as savings

Scientists vs. Non-Scientists

I think that is the biggest problem when it comes to the consistently overly conservative reports on the effects of climate change (global warming).  The IPCC probably does do a very good job of reporting the science, but scientists (due in part to our inherently conservative bent and in part to things like peer review, and the very fuzzy nature of projections) are likely to shy away from more dire positions...at least within journals, and maybe meetings.

Non-scientists, however, simply don't understand scientists.  Scientists want to keep the uncertainty in measurements and predictions as low as possible--or, another way of putting it, to have as high a confidence as possible. But that focus can be problematic when new data doesn't match existing.  There can be an urge to dismiss outlying data, to assume that if something is significantly different than what others have found, it is likely to be wrong.  Prediction in particular is a very difficult area to deal with, especially when those predictions relate to complex systems and long time scales.  Very small changes in initial settings can lead to very large changes in the results. This isn't normally wrong.  Typically, the odds are that if your data is different from all existing data, you messed something up. 

The political particulars of global warming impose another constraint--one that causes a systematic push towards more conservative reporting.  No one wants to get it wrong on the high side and give fodder to the anti-science, anti-gloabal warming crowd (not that they really need anything since they tend to make up crap even without).  (Also, no one wants to be chicken little or the boy who cried wolf.) 

So things are worse than most predictions.  Al Gore was right, but he's fat and claimed he invented the internet so no one should listen to him.  On the other hand the world may end in a couple weeks here when the long count runs out and we won't have to worry about the inevitable humanitarian crisis to come after all.

Coins and Bills

In the face of the manufactured crisis that is the austerity bomb, it looks like at least a few people are hoping to convince Congress to switch our $1 cash form from a bill to a coin.  I am wholly in support, of course (I also think we should add a $2 coin to the mix, the combination would mean this article is crap, as seigniorage would be much greater, and usage of the $2 would be likely higher than the $1).

Really, though, if someone wants to argue for making/saving money with the mint the most obvious solution is to stop minting the penny, and even more so, the nickel.  Both of those cost more to make than the face value.  If we stopped making them we would save money.

There are weak, but understandable arguments for keeping the $1 bill--I disagree with them but they exist--the arguments against killing the penny on the other hand (or the nickel, but you hear more about ending the penny) are some combination of paranoid, and/or stupid (I was going to add selfish, but those are pretty much also stupid).

I Think Most Actual Smart People Know This

Rich people are not really the best and brightest by a long-shot.  Particularly when their wealth is related to high finance.  Yes, they are well educated (going to Harvard is more qualification to get into that circle of "elites" than actually knowing/understanding anything), and yes, many are smart at some level.  But they are not nearly as smart as many people (particularly themselves and beltway media) give them credit for.  I think David Atkins take on them is pretty on the money:

They're good at making deals. They know the right people. They have a good knack for social intelligence and little compunction about skimming a lot of money off the top of the labor of others.

That combined with a good dollop of luck and/or a phenomenal amount of greed is about it.

Please note that while it is possible to be ridiculously wealthy without being astonishingly greedy, it is not very common.  In particular any wealthy individual who is complaining about taxes/the deficit/socialism or who supported Romney is definitely greedy.

Video Gaming

The thing about console gaming for me isn't related to overall consoles and sales, but the rush out for the latest thing.  If the number of titles available on the PS3 was limited, then there would be a decent chance that I would shell out $60 for the latest game.  It isn't, though, and there are plenty of 1-2 yr old titles available new for $20, and lots, even fairly recent ones, available used for under $15. 

Part of it is I'm cheap, and part is that I'm not spending 80 hrs a week playing games so I can't exactly clear 1-10 games/week, but there are way more titles available right now than I will ever be able to play.  Being a year behind the curve doesn't really phase me.

Really?!?

I'm not sure I can stress how terrifying this piece is:

But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

They just couldn't believe they had been so wrong...

...But then came Colorado for the president and Florida also was looking tougher than anyone had imagined...

...Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."

Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.

Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

They had no reason whatsoever to be surprised by this, even if they were confident in victory.  To be shocked by the defeat they must have been living in the reality impaired world of Fox News.  While I expect that of a sizable fraction of those who vote for Republicans, I had always just assumed that the party higher-ups were aware that that was a warped, fact deprived world.  That Romney and numbers man Ryan would be so sure of victory that this left them shell shocked indicates a frightening separation from reality for those at the top of the GOP.

Price "Gouging"

Further the gas line discussion earlier, I have seen a few people saying that restrictions on "price gouging" are part of the problem in Jersey.  The best pro-gouging (overall) piece I've seen is probably Yglesias', the only sort of detailed anti- bit I've seen so far was on Digby's blog. I don't really completely agree with either.

While my policy preferences would change things, right now, gasoline is a necessity for a large swath of this country, a luxury for a subset and totally useless for yet a third group.  Letting the market dictate prices benefits the luxury segment at the expense of the high need.  Restrictions in price changes that lead to huge lines disadvantage both, but, again, this falls more heavily on those that need gas than the others.  Straight up rationing works, but maybe not the easiest thing to implement, particularly in a crisis, and it may not prevent the lines anyway.

So what's the solution in these cases?  Some form of hybrid rationing would probably be best.  Everyone can get up to maybe 2 gallons at the normal price, then anything over is $$$.  The total volume locked in a the low price must be small enough to prevent lines but high enough to let people get somewhere.

Update: Really good read on this subject from Mark Thoma.

Statistics

People don't understand them.  The crap coming out against Nate Silver is mostly just people trying to change the narrative, but there is some element of it (and probably a large fraction among those who believe it) that is just not understanding what polling is or how statistics work.

A 76% (or, now an 86%) chance for an Obama victory actually indicates a pretty close election, not a landslide or a sure thing by any stretch.  If Obama had a 5% lead nationally his odds of winning would likely be well over 95% at this close date.  One day away and less than 90% indicates, to me, that the race is very close.  Just because the safer bet is with Obama doesn't mean it's not still a gamble.

In a Nutshel

This is my frustration:

We don't have a functioning federal system. We have one group half composed of progressives and half of centrists, up against an obstructionist group of lying, moronic connivers who believe in confidence fairies, tax cuts that magically pay for themselves, self-aware uteri, and an earth that is 6,000 years old. It's not exactly a surprise that they would scuttle an inconvenient economic report.

I'm not sure I believe Democrats are half progressives--maybe from a person standpoint, but the policy they have pushed/enacted has been 100% centrist.  Or as Venn Diagram:

Clinton was kind of on the right wing of the Democratic party when he was first elected.  Though to me, the really scary thing is that Regan was on the right wing of the Republican party when he won in 1980.

The lunatic left ("9/11 was an inside job") and the radical right are about equally bonkers, though the radical right is much larger and pretty much the center of the Republican party whereas the lunatic left is completely ignored by the Democratic party.  Bat-shit insane doesn't really exist on a right left continuum but it has found a home among Republicans. 

Moderates and centrists in real policy terms are the defining element of the Democratic party.  Important to note for this group, though, is that the self-proclaimed variant that is found largely among the pundit class are largely idiots whose stated policy preferences are almost exactly Obama's stated positions, but who--again, because they are idiots--don't want to admit or even think that so they pretend that Obama is actually liberal and that Romney2012 is actually the same as Romney2008.

Gas Lines

The entire state of NJ is less than 2 hrs from me, and less than 1 hr from an open gas station without a mile long line.  So why are people waiting 2 hrs in miles long gas lines? (Yes, I realize that 2 hrs to me then 2 hrs back is 4 hrs, but there are closer stations that are open without ridiculines, probably some in Western Jersey.)