EconLog

> It is very uncommon for people to say that double taxation has occurred when a nominal (but not real) gain due to inflation is taxed.

Note that this was not any part of the model I described; assuming inflation of 0%, capital gains taxes are still double taxation because the value of $100,000 (real, inflation-adjusted, or your favorite equivalent term) today is greater than the value of $100,000 inflation-adjusted dollars 20 years from now.

Believing that "the double taxation argument that justifies the capital gains rate" has to do with the corporate income tax is a significant mistake that will cause you disappointment should you manage to eliminate the corporate income tax -- the arguments for a lower capital gains rate will not go away, because eliminating the corporate income tax will not address them.

Here's a professional economist making the same point in far-off 2017: ( http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/07/do_you_really_w.html )

> I always find that some people are confused by the claim that investment income should not be included with wage income. I like to explain this with a thought experiment of two equally well off twin brothers. Assume that both earn identical lifetime wage incomes, and neither inherits money from their parents. Then both are equally well off. If one chose to buy two Hondas and the other chooses to but one BMW, you would not say the guy with two cars is better off. If one chooses to buy a BMW at age 25 and the other saves and…

This is interesting as an art piece, but I think it is easy to intuit from the presentation that the authors are not being very careful thinkers.

The truth is that the question of austerity is a fairly complex one. The reason it seems so cut and dried is that the modal promoter of austerity has no training in macroeconomics and is making arguments that are clearly not supported by theory. That said, to portray Krugman as definitely correct on the matter of austerity is very misleading.

There are basically two camps of people opposing Krugman, "mainstream Austrians" and market monetarists. Mainstream Austrians isn't really a category, but this is people who make arguments based on analogies with household budgets, and worry about hyperinflation from out of control spending. Most of them have economic theories that are not well-supported empirically. These people say austerity is better and will lead to stronger growth, possibly after a painful period of economic adjustment. Often these are head economists at small banks or other pundits that get a lot of airtime for their opinions. They probably don't actually identify as Austrians 95% of the time, but in this particular instance they are following Austrian thinking.

The other major camp is market monetarists, whom Krugman is very dismissive of, despite the fact that their arguments are compelling and their empirical support is probably as strong as pro-spending Keynesians. In his arguments with market monetarists Krugman…

I don't follow sports, but I also don't go around professing my ignorance. If someone changes the topic to sports, I still engage with them. I ask questions, and they're usually happy to answer. A couple days ago, someone delighted in telling me the story of Marshawn Lynch. (I had to look up the name, but I did remember his antics with the press.)

Having common ground with more people is not a bad argument for learning about sports. But I do have some qualms with the author's decision.

First, I cannot stress this enough: American football is an odious sport. Players regularly suffer concussions, traumatic brain injuries, and joint trauma. Permanent and debilitating injuries are common. The average player lasts 3.5 years in the NFL. Then they are spat out and left to deal with a lifetime of health issues. Yes, players freely choose their profession. So what? The same argument can be used to defend dueling. Football is bad and people should feel guilty watching it. If you're going to watch a popular sport, watch baseball.

But really, what's so bad about being out of touch with most Americans? Why draw the line at political borders? By population, vastly more people love cricket or soccer than American football. I don't mind being out of touch with sports enthusiasts regardless of their country of origin. If you're like me and you spend most of your time with people who aren't interested in sports, there's no point in learning about football or baseball. You already have…

Exactly. Math isn't a set of procedures, it's a way of thinking. Without understanding that way of thinking it is impossible to be an educated person.

"Most mathematicians at one time or another have probably found themselves in the position of trying to refute the notion that they are people with "a head for figures." or that they "know a lot of formulas." At such times it may be convenient to have an illustration at hand to show that mathematics need not be concerned with figures, either numerical or geometrical. For this purpose we recommend the statement and proof of our Theorem 1. The argument is carried out not in mathematical symbols but in ordinary English; there are no obscure or technical terms. Knowledge of calculus is not presupposed. In fact, one hardly needs to know how to count. Yet any mathematician will immediately recognize the argument as mathematical, while people without mathematical training will probably find difficulty in following the argument, though not because of unfamiliarity with the subject matter.

What, then, to raise the old question once more, is mathematics? The answer, it appears, is that any argument which is carried out with sufficient precision is mathematical, and the reason that your friends and ours cannot understand mathematics is not because they have no head for figures, but because they are unable [or unwilling, DRH] to achieve the degree of concentration required to follow a moderately involved sequence of inferences. This…

This works in small experiments because when you give money to a small group of poor people (A) within a larger group of poor people (B), group A gains leverage compared to their prior position and compared to group B.

When you give money to all poor people, the net result is simply inflation[1]. If transfer payments were made to taper up from max(wealth) (receives $0) to min(wealth) (receives $average(wealth)), disparity would be brought to 0, which would naturally lead to everybody doing what they wanted rather than what earned them income. This would be a lot of fun, but it would unfortunately reduce the developmental value of humans to zero[2], and machines would evolve to replace us all (could be gray goo, could be the borg, etc.).

The true path to freedom from work is to work collaboratively on a humanoid robot with some basic rules for human interaction: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Those should suffice for a while, but I know not what will come of them down the line.

That's all for now :) Have a great weekend, everyone!

1. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law

2. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/05/robots_of_the_f.html

I had just submitted the OLD link summarizing last summer's interview to HN today (to answer a question that came up overnight about Google's hiring practices), and I see that the author here was just as struck by the statement from last summer, "G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. ... We found that they don’t predict anything." In more complete context, from last summer's interview by another New York Times writer,[1] that statement was "One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything." So, yes, if you have little work experience and were in full-time school recently, Google will ask you about your G.P.A. But if you have substantial industry experience, Google will ask you about that, or at least such is the claim here about current Google practice.

Some comments posted before this comment mentioned the confusing way that "general cognitive ability" is said not to be the same thing as IQ. No psychologist, and especially no psychologist specializing in industrial and organizational psychology, would speak that way. The universal statement in that…