I've been looking at the IRS's statistical tables. The most recent is for 2007: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07in01ar.xls. A few interesting statistics:
Of 142M total returns, only 90 million of them are taxable. I'm not sure all the reasons why a return might be "non taxable" but of the just under 48M nonpaying filers, $615 Billion of reported income are not taxed. Most of this seems to be coming from the 36M people who had less than $20K of income. In 2007, a family of 4 got a total $13,600 in exemptions, after the standard deduction of $10,700.
9 million people had $382B of long term net capital gains. 23 million people had $150B of dividends. This $532B is taxed at 15% after the Bush tax cuts of 2003 and all but about $50B is to people with incomes over $100K. Just taxing this as ordinary income would net the government about $100B.
1 million people had AGI of over $500K, a total of $1.842 trillion dollars. Nearly all of them had dividends, and $105B of the $150B went to people in this class. About half of them had long term capital gains, and $260B of the $382B went to these people. So if we were to raise the tax bracket for people making $500K or more by 4%, including dividends and long term gains, the government would net from this $67B.
29 May 2011
24 May 2011
Razors
A philosophical razor is a logical device that's effective at shaving away implausible explanations. This is sometimes generalized to include any useful philosophical adage. I intend to keep updating this list as I discover new ones.
Occam's razor: The simplest explanation is the most likely one. It doesn't necessarily mean the simplest explanation is right, but we can save a lot of time not worrying about unnecessarily complex stuff.
Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity." Sometimes this is expressed as "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence"
Popper's falsifiability principle: It's not scientific unless it can be subjected to an experiment which might prove it false. (this is actually due to Newton)
The golden rule: Don't do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.
Rawls' veil of ignorance: When deciding the morality of something, imagine that society was completely refashioned, and you do not know who you will be.
Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Sometimes this is expressed as: if there's a right way to do something and a wrong way, the wrong way will happen.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it. -Sinclair Lewis
The Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. (I think Sturgeon was being very generous....99.9% at least...)
Gresham's Law (and): Bad money drives out the good. This is valid for any competitive system: If cheating is allowed, pretty soon everybody has to do it in order to be competitive.
Planck's Principle: Science rarely proceeds by changing the minds of those who already have a position; rather, the conservatives die and younger people familiar with the new idea take over the field. Sometimes expressed as "Science advances one funeral at a time"
Godwin's Law: If any conversation goes on long enough, someone will bring up the Nazis. Who ever does that is losing.
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time and cost available
Parkinson's Law of Triviality: During any meeting, most of the time is spent discussing trivial but easily understood issues, not what matters
Occam's razor: The simplest explanation is the most likely one. It doesn't necessarily mean the simplest explanation is right, but we can save a lot of time not worrying about unnecessarily complex stuff.
Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity." Sometimes this is expressed as "Do not invoke conspiracy as explanation when ignorance and incompetence will suffice, as conspiracy implies intelligence"
Popper's falsifiability principle: It's not scientific unless it can be subjected to an experiment which might prove it false. (this is actually due to Newton)
The golden rule: Don't do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.
Rawls' veil of ignorance: When deciding the morality of something, imagine that society was completely refashioned, and you do not know who you will be.
Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Sometimes this is expressed as: if there's a right way to do something and a wrong way, the wrong way will happen.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it. -Sinclair Lewis
The Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. (I think Sturgeon was being very generous....99.9% at least...)
Gresham's Law (and): Bad money drives out the good. This is valid for any competitive system: If cheating is allowed, pretty soon everybody has to do it in order to be competitive.
Planck's Principle: Science rarely proceeds by changing the minds of those who already have a position; rather, the conservatives die and younger people familiar with the new idea take over the field. Sometimes expressed as "Science advances one funeral at a time"
Godwin's Law: If any conversation goes on long enough, someone will bring up the Nazis. Who ever does that is losing.
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time and cost available
Parkinson's Law of Triviality: During any meeting, most of the time is spent discussing trivial but easily understood issues, not what matters
To an uninformed person, an informed person seems insane.
I've been looking for a source for this without success
02 May 2011
Extended vs Nuclear Families
Prior to World War I, practically everybody in the United States lived in an extended family. After World War II, almost everybody lived in a nuclear family. This change has had an enormous effect on social structures.
In an extended family, there are several families living together, or at least close by, fathers, mothers, unmarried adults, children, grandparents. This is a very powerful thing: For example, if someone needs a babysitter, or a permanent substitute parent for some reason, there's probably another family living in the same house or at least within a few blocks. If someone can't get a job, gets sick, becomes too old to be productive, or feels compelled to do something non-remunerative, there are other family members to take up the slack. If someone is inclined to act in self destructive way--spend way more than their means for example--there is probably a wise and respected family member there to talk them down (I believe that fewer than 10% of people are competent to run family finances--for evidence, the average credit card debt is over $14,000). This comes with a lot of baggage though: family members don't always get along, and often unwanted pressures are exerted. Still, the system worked, from the dawn of humanity (or before it--the apes have extended families too), until the 20th century.
The nuclear family is the smallest family unit that can work. Mom, dad, and a few kids, strike out on their own. They have no support system outside of the immediate family, and as long as everybody is healthy and fulfills their assigned roles, it can work. It's a central theme of the westward movement that started with the homestead act and reached its peak with the GI bill--and millions of people have benefited. But it doesn't always work, and because the support of the extended family is missing, when it doesn't it can have very serious consequences. Lots of things can cause failures: illness or injury, money problems, divorce or abandonment. They're often related--money is a large factor in a great many divorces, and illness is a big cause of money problems. When the family breaks down, the ones that are hurt the most are the helpless: children, the elderly or the incapacitated. The adults are often hurt plenty too.
Supporting this trend is the "social safety net"--unemployment insurance, social security and company pensions, employer health care and medicare, and more. Without all of the safety net, 95% of families are just a few months from destitution. Losing a job, someone getting sick, an investment mistake, and many other things, can destroy lives. With them, many families end badly anyway, but a lot more can survive the loss of a job, illness, accident, divorce, or any of the other pitfalls that are part of life. Most families have one or more these problems at some point in their lives. When the economy is troubled, more people have problems.
The bottom line is this: if you're in favor of anything less than a full, taxpayer funded social safety net, you're implicitly in favor of forcing everybody back into an extended family. This doesn't have to mean a biological family--a group of employees or a "commune" may serve the same purpose. But without the safety net, nuclear families become very difficult for most people in the face of problems.
In an extended family, there are several families living together, or at least close by, fathers, mothers, unmarried adults, children, grandparents. This is a very powerful thing: For example, if someone needs a babysitter, or a permanent substitute parent for some reason, there's probably another family living in the same house or at least within a few blocks. If someone can't get a job, gets sick, becomes too old to be productive, or feels compelled to do something non-remunerative, there are other family members to take up the slack. If someone is inclined to act in self destructive way--spend way more than their means for example--there is probably a wise and respected family member there to talk them down (I believe that fewer than 10% of people are competent to run family finances--for evidence, the average credit card debt is over $14,000). This comes with a lot of baggage though: family members don't always get along, and often unwanted pressures are exerted. Still, the system worked, from the dawn of humanity (or before it--the apes have extended families too), until the 20th century.
The nuclear family is the smallest family unit that can work. Mom, dad, and a few kids, strike out on their own. They have no support system outside of the immediate family, and as long as everybody is healthy and fulfills their assigned roles, it can work. It's a central theme of the westward movement that started with the homestead act and reached its peak with the GI bill--and millions of people have benefited. But it doesn't always work, and because the support of the extended family is missing, when it doesn't it can have very serious consequences. Lots of things can cause failures: illness or injury, money problems, divorce or abandonment. They're often related--money is a large factor in a great many divorces, and illness is a big cause of money problems. When the family breaks down, the ones that are hurt the most are the helpless: children, the elderly or the incapacitated. The adults are often hurt plenty too.
Supporting this trend is the "social safety net"--unemployment insurance, social security and company pensions, employer health care and medicare, and more. Without all of the safety net, 95% of families are just a few months from destitution. Losing a job, someone getting sick, an investment mistake, and many other things, can destroy lives. With them, many families end badly anyway, but a lot more can survive the loss of a job, illness, accident, divorce, or any of the other pitfalls that are part of life. Most families have one or more these problems at some point in their lives. When the economy is troubled, more people have problems.
The bottom line is this: if you're in favor of anything less than a full, taxpayer funded social safety net, you're implicitly in favor of forcing everybody back into an extended family. This doesn't have to mean a biological family--a group of employees or a "commune" may serve the same purpose. But without the safety net, nuclear families become very difficult for most people in the face of problems.
01 May 2011
Beltane and the Cross Quarter Days
On the earth, our weather, our calendars, agriculture and many other things are driven by our relationship with the sun, and traditional peoples thought about this relationship a lot. They needed to. For example, it's important to know when to begin planting in the spring: plant too soon and a frost may kill the young growth. Plant too late and the summer heat may dry them out. This is especially critical in pre-irrigation agricultures. So they studied the seasons carefully and began splitting the year into fractions.
The year is traditionally divided up into four seasons of roughly 92 days, normally deliniated by their starting points: the solstices and the equinoxes. These are the days that the sun appears to reach the endpoints and midpoints in it's travel north and south over the course of the year. Modern astronomers have figured out exactly when these points occur. Since the match between the sun and the Gregorian Calendar is imperfect, some of the dates below may be off by a day or two in some years.
In addition, most cultures have divided the seasons into halves, around a mid-season day. These days are called Cross Quarter days. Since these days mostly coincide with various planting and harvest cycles, many traditional religions all over the world celebrate them, and many of them have some reflection in modern festivals in nearly all cultures around the world, although often transmuted beyond recognizability.
Here's a list of these days, including some of the many names they've gone by
Note that I've used earth centered terminology--the sun travels north and south. In fact what happens is the earth is tilted approximately 23 degrees relative to it's orbital axis around the sun. In practical terms this means that the sun appears to travel north and south: it's in the north when the earth is in the part of it's orbit with the north pole is tipped toward the sun, and it's in the south at the other part of its orbit.
On the Equinoxes, (from the Latin for Equal Night) rotational axis of the earth is exactly perpendicular to the line to the sun. At these points, the day and night are approximately equal in length, hence the name. (The actual length of the day is based on how far north or south of the equator you are. In the spring, the actual equal day is a little early, and in the autumn it's a little late.)
I originally wrote this article in the late 90s, with a major rewrite in 2005.
The year is traditionally divided up into four seasons of roughly 92 days, normally deliniated by their starting points: the solstices and the equinoxes. These are the days that the sun appears to reach the endpoints and midpoints in it's travel north and south over the course of the year. Modern astronomers have figured out exactly when these points occur. Since the match between the sun and the Gregorian Calendar is imperfect, some of the dates below may be off by a day or two in some years.
In addition, most cultures have divided the seasons into halves, around a mid-season day. These days are called Cross Quarter days. Since these days mostly coincide with various planting and harvest cycles, many traditional religions all over the world celebrate them, and many of them have some reflection in modern festivals in nearly all cultures around the world, although often transmuted beyond recognizability.
Here's a list of these days, including some of the many names they've gone by
| Midwinter's day, Imbolc, Candlemas, Groundhog's day. | Feb 2 | The centerpoint of the winter is generally the coldest time of the year, although the days have begun to get noticeably longer (in the north. Opposite in the south) |
| Spring Equinox. | Mar 21 | The sun is at the midpoint of it's trip to the north. Practically every culture has some celebration related to this event: In the Northern Hemisphere, it's time to start planting. Passover/Easter (named for the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar) are derived from this. (it's the first sabbath after the first full moon after the equinox) |
| May Day, Beltane, Midspring day | May 1 | The first planting is complete and the first plants are starting to come up. This is a time of fertility festivals. More recently it's become popular for pro-worker events. |
| Summer Solstice | Jun 21 | The start of summer. |
| Midsummer's Day, Lunasa | Aug 1 | The plants are up, the growing is at it's peak. |
| Autumn Equniox | Sep 21 | The harvests begin. |
| Midautumn day, Samhain, Hallows Day | Nov 1 | The harvests are complete or nearly so, and things are beginning to die back for winter. Hence the death imagery of Halloween (Hallows Eve). Once it's over, Harvest celebrations, Thanksgiving celebrations, etc., begin. |
| Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, Yule | Dec 21 | Most cultures have a winter celebration of some sort. They often are designed to remind people of the rebirth to come, despite the long winter grind ahead. E.g. Christmas celebrates the birth of the Messiah, Chanuka celebrates the survival of the temple and the miracle of the oil, etc. |
Note that I've used earth centered terminology--the sun travels north and south. In fact what happens is the earth is tilted approximately 23 degrees relative to it's orbital axis around the sun. In practical terms this means that the sun appears to travel north and south: it's in the north when the earth is in the part of it's orbit with the north pole is tipped toward the sun, and it's in the south at the other part of its orbit.
On the Equinoxes, (from the Latin for Equal Night) rotational axis of the earth is exactly perpendicular to the line to the sun. At these points, the day and night are approximately equal in length, hence the name. (The actual length of the day is based on how far north or south of the equator you are. In the spring, the actual equal day is a little early, and in the autumn it's a little late.)
I originally wrote this article in the late 90s, with a major rewrite in 2005.
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