Results for “from the comments” 1664 found
From the comments, a bailout through credit card receivables?
Accepting the overall premise of Tyler’s Bloomberg column, shouldn’t the government encourage citizens to run up large credit card balances, most of which will become receivables of the major banks, and perhaps even encourage Amazon, Walmart, et. al. to sell goods on their own credit as well like in the old days of dry-goods stores? Then to the extent a massive government bailout is needed, the government can just deal directly with the relatively few Big Businesses that carry those receivables, e.g. by assuming the receivables or subsidizing them.
That is from Nadav.
From the comments — on Paul Volcker
Questions that are rarely asked (from the comments)
Would the two percent wealth tax apply to muni bonds? Because of their tax advantaged status, muni bonds are generally held by the wealthy, who get enough of a tax advantage to offset the lower yield. A wealth tax presumably causes more “reach for yield” among those affected, which would disproportionately affect munis.
On the other hand, a wealth tax that excepted wealth held in munis would create a massive tax advantage for them at the high end, much greater than their current income tax exemption.
That is from John Thacker in the comments. And, for the case where the wealth tax would apply to more people than just the very wealthy, Dallas ponders:
How would a wealth tax impact the fat civil service defined benefit pension plans? If you look at the actuarial value of my friend’s public pensions they have values in the 3 million+ range (up to 90% of a spiked salary at 55 years of age for life no-cut contract with a cost of living clause: if you claim disability, it becomes tax-free). A 2% wealth tax on that value would be $60,000+ per year.
Of course, since the people imposing the wealth tax would be bureaucrats with defined pension plans, they would be an asset (wealth) that is excluded and how can you charge a tax against an unfunded liability. Meanwhile, people like me who saved for his retirement would have their assets stolen (perhaps to fund that unfunded liability of the ruling bureaucrats).
The details of a wealth tax with the added variable of time would become even more complex than even the income tax system. With most long term assets value only becoming apparent upon sale having any real long-lived asset would become economically insane. You want some asset with near-zero value (as determined by the IRS bureaucrat) until the year you sell it. That will create a whole new class of privileged assets.
Ponder away on that one…
From the comments, on the Coase theorem
#1 on prefiguring of the so-called Coase theorem, consider also p. 396-7 of W.H. Hutt, “Co-ordination and the Size of the Firm,” South African Journal of Economics 2(4), December 1934:
“Now, under one ownership, their relations would, given competitive institutions, be exactly the same, provided that both methods were equally efficient from the social standpoint. There is no reason why the spreading of the lines of responsibility back to several sources should lead to less effective planning than subordinacy to an authority emanating from one source, given the equal availability of relevant knowledge to the managers who devise the plans…The most important significant difference between the two cases is that, in practice, in the one case there may not be the availability of relevant knowledge that there is in the other.”
That is from Daniel B. Klein. And:
For a still earlier ‘discovery’ with transaction costs and all see my former colleague Yehoshua Liebermann’s “The Coase Theorem in Jewish Law,” Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 293-303
That is from Moshe Syrquin, link for both here.
From the comments — the power of professors
The PhD is a credential that graduate students need, and which the supervising professor uses to hold power over them. Doing away with the PhD as a valuable credential takes power away from professors. That may not bother Tyler, but most professors covet and zealously protect whatever institutional and personal power they can grasp.
That is from Tom Meadowcraft, commenting on my proposal to limit economics graduate study to three years.
From the comments, what if big business hated your family?
Suppose Big Business did hate your family, what would that look like?
Would it mean adopting a working culture that made it ever harder to rise to power within it while also having said family? Would it require those with career ambitions to geographically abandon extended family and to live in areas notoriously difficult for raising families? Would it mean requiring long delays on family formation while you got credentialed, worked with little remuneration while getting your foot in the door, and then place huge amounts of time and effort on career growth rather than investing in your family? Does corporate culture act like it hates your family?
Would it mean selling products which have strong correlations with family strife and dissolution? Would it market products known to be destructive to thousands of families relentlessly? Would it market products that consume time in great quantities at the expense of family time investment? Would it routinely mock and denigrate your family roles for cheap publicity?
Would it mean lobbying for policies which are good for the business, but bad for your family? Would it support seeking a larger supply of labor via immigration? Would it support visa restricted immigration of labor that is less able to defy corporate diktat without having legal or financial issues? Would it argue for child care subsidies for the people it wishes to employee rather than for all Americans and all child care arrangements?
I believe businesses are amoral and are just maximizing money, power, and prestige for those in positions of power within them. Yet, this formal indifference seems to be giving rise to a lot of behaviors that are, at best, perceived to be hostile to families. I mean what exactly are the pro-family things that business endeavors to do? Provide a cornucopia of goods and services? I guess, but that seems pretty neutral at best for supporting families as opposed to other societal arrangements.
Because everything is political these days, and particularly because Big Business has decided to be political we might ask how corporations compare to families. The majority of American families (even if we include everything except single adults living alone) have priorities that diverge significantly from business. If we take a slightly stricter view of “family” as either parents or married, we find business diverges even more from the median family.
After all, both the median parent and the median spouse are vastly more religious than the country as a whole. Both are vastly more likely to vote Republican. And even within the Democratic party, marrieds or parents tend to be right of their unmarried and childless peers. When it comes to the expressed preferences of the median “family”, the median corporation is in opposition most of the time. On the many issues where the nation is split near 50/50, business comes down on the side with more single, childless people the vast majority of the time. And hence they are ever more often backing the partisan politics opposed to the wishes of the majority of families.
There is nothing wrong with this, and certainly nothing illegal about it, but I would be shocked if large organizations that are disproportionately filled with the single and childless who are located in regions that are disproportionately single and childless and who are busy virtue signalling to academia, politics, and other left bastions that are disproportionately single and childless managed to somehow not end up at cross purposes for the majority of families. And frankly I would be shocked if this antagonism did not spill over into emotional terms.
Certainly, I am always told that this sort of analysis is why [Structure X] is antagonistic, if only implicitly, against racial minorities. I see no reason why parents or spouses would feel any differently.
That is from Sure.
From the comments, was 1970 an American turning point of sorts?
A lot of things changed around 1970. That year looks like a major historical fulcrum for the USA.
1970 was approximately (within a few years):
1. The year manufacturing employment started to stagnate (later to decline).
2. The Great Compression reached its peak.
3. The Great Stagnation began.
4. Roe v. Wade was passed
5. Women entering workforce en masse.
6. Historic increase in immigration begins.
7. End of Bretton Woods.
8. Beginning of large trade deficits.
That is from Famulus.
From the comments, on alcohol abuse
I refer you to Prevalence of 12-Month Alcohol Use, High-Risk Drinking, and DSM-IV Alcohol Use Disorder in the United States, 2001-2002 to 2012-2013. My apologies for not being able to locate the primary data sooner.
Key summary quotes below:
Twelve-month alcohol use significantly increased from 65.4% in 2001-2002 to 72.7% in 2012-2013, a relative percentage increase of 11.2%
The prevalence of 12-month high-risk drinking increased significantly between 2001-2002 and 2012-2013 from 9.7% to 12.6% (change, 29.9%) in the total population.
The prevalence of 12-month DSM-IV AUD increased significantly from 8.5% to 12.7% (change, 49.4%) in the total population.
Twelve-month DSM-IV AUD among 12-month alcohol users significantly increased from 12.9% to 17.5% (change, 35.7%) in the total population.
At the end of the day, I am still going to trust outcomes data over survey data. People lie, autopsies don’t. What I know is that acute alcohol poisoning increased by 700% in 20 years. You die from acute alcohol poisoning not because you slowly got sick over years, but because you drank so much so quickly that your body is overwhelmed. And this is in spite of the medical profession getting better at hemodialysis to bring down acutely toxic ethanol poisoning.
What I also know is that alcohol related hepatic deaths bottomed out in 2003 and have since been rising rapidly (~50% increase). This is due to the fact that the generation socialized by prohibition had lower lifetime alcohol use and problematic alcohol use than the generations before or after. As that generation died off, or aged out, successive generations who drank more started refilling the hepatic wards. Even more fun for every age bracket, we are seeing more alcohol related hepatic death than we saw a decade ago for those same age brackets excepting only the youngest cohorts.
These are basically impossible to square with a thesis of no substantial change in drinking patterns. They fit quite nicely with formal epidemiological surveys showing more problematic drinking and a shift in alcohol consumption.
That is from “Sure,” see also his/her other comments in the longer thread.
From the comments
‘ Does rioting work?’
It depends.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes it does
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Here is the original post.
From the comments, on work hours and spousal distribution
#3) If working long hours is bad, “overworked” in the author’s language, then why would the author say that women are often “stuck” in limited roles or take a “back seat” to their husbands. Why not say that husbands most often bear the burden of overworking so that their wives can have a better work-life balance, even in cases where the wife has sufficient education to bear more overwork burdens? Conversely, if wives really are taking a “back seat” to their husbands, then it must be the case that workers *welcome the opportunity* to earn premiums by working longer hours. So, which is it, are husbands sacrificing home life for the benefit of their wives or do couples actually view higher “overwork” premiums as a welcome benefit?
Here is a logically coherent, self-consistent way of describing things: The percentage of women with advanced education has been steadily increasing. That liberalization, along with economic liberalization, has contributed to economic growth, especially for highly educated couples. Such couples are well enough off that, in many cases, both spouses don’t even have to work full time to generate sufficient income. Many affluent wives prioritize work-life balance over pure financial returns. With such a large fraction of highly educated workers prioritizing work-life balance, firms find it necessary to increase “overwork” premiums to attract workers to fill the most time-demanding roles. The tax wedge between taxed office work and untaxed home production (own childcare and enjoyment of spending time with one’s family) may also contribute to workers’ prioritization of work-life balance over pure financial compensation.
That is from BC.
The wealth tax and privacy — from the comments
Despite the unnecessary duplication (FATCA etc), I’m actually in favor of requiring banks to disclose how much income US taxpayers earn on ther accounts in the US and abroad. Unfortunately, if you are going to have an income tax system, you can’t simply rely on everyone voluntarily reporting. But, this also raises serious privacy concerns that need to be balanced. The wealth tax on all or most all assets would significantly alter the current balance between disclosure and privacy. As noted in the article, *everything* would need to be disclosed to the IRS *every year* much like an annual estate tax return. Expect substantial additional reporting requirements on all assets. Think that won’t apply to you? How else are they going to know you don’t have $50 million hidden somewhere? How are *taxpayers* going to know they don’t meet that (or some other) threshold ? Trust me, lawyers and accountants, (legitimately) worrying about their own potential liability, will insist that far more people undergo these audits internally just to make sure they are not above the limit.
These privacy issues also have potentially serious political implications. I suppose Bill and Hillary and Barrack and Michelle (add your own list) would be subject to these annual wealth tax returns. Annual audit by the IRS on everything? Do they really want the Trump administration (or some other) having access to all that? This sounds like a potential special prosecutor on steroids and one that is not always going to be politically neutral. I see the potential here for a lot of political abuse and not just from one side or the other.
That is from Vivian Darkbloom on MR and in the LOC, with other good points in the comment too.
From the comments, on Facebook
The problem with this paper is that it excludes, entirely, individuals and businesses who use Facebook as a (or The) e-commerce channel for their commercial activities. That’s a common mistake, especially in the US and Europe, where the platform is widely viewed as a means for non-commercial social interaction. But elsewhere in the world – especially Africa and India – it’s also viewed as a crucial commercial and trading platform (that Facebook is trying to leverage). Ask a Nigerian secondhand goods trader how much he’d accept to give up his account, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be more than $1k! Anyway, I touched on some of this back in April, here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-19/emerging-markets-can-t-quit-facebook
That is from Adam Minter.
Procurement and compliance costs (from the comments)
From my time in both the military and healthcare I can say that the biggest problem are the compliance costs.
For example, I have a phone app that allows me to send texts. We pay very good money to have said app. It does nothing that my phone cannot innately do – except be HIPAA compliant. EMR software is clunky, an active time suck, and adds little or no value … but we are required by law to use it. In each case there are scads of less specific programs out there which are insanely cheaper and more functional, but those programs cannot justify the costs of becoming compliant for a small niche of their business.
In the military we had similar difficulties. If you want systems to be secure, you need to pay extra as the marketplace does not do real security for consumer goods. Likewise, if you worry about logistical tails, building in assured access drastically increases costs.
And I fully suspect that prices will continue to diverge. As ever more of the internet ends up in a giant interconnected mess there will be fewer people able to code in a secure fashion. There will be fewer parts of the ecosystem that can be used by security conscious actors.
Then we get to actual procurement itself. People worry that arcane institutions will somehow make off with lots of money and spend it either poorly or nefariously. Absent easily observed price and cost data in both sectors we began developing rules. These rules drive firms out of the market (e.g. we needed some light interior remodeling to comply with a regulation that specified inches between things, the contractor who has been most affordable and highest quality refused to bid because the hassle on his side was too great). Eventually the rules become too complicated and you start needing specialists to interpret them. Costs skyrocket and firms abuse rules to pad profits. Then the lawyers get involved and things get more expensive. Again, medical and military consumers become a captive market facing greater monopoly as fewer firms can navigate the thicket of rules to even try to make money.
Then we have the problem that people look at these sectors and say that it is public money. All public money should help with goal X (e.g. going “green”, affirmative action, boycotting South Africa/Israel, patriotism, “America first”) and then we become even more overly constrained. Find vendors who meet one hurdle is hard, finding ones that meet 30 is nigh unto impossible unless the vendor is engineering the firm to market solely to this niche – and charging monopoly rates as his reward.
Any single thing would not be too bad for prices, but the marketplace in general is diverging from military and healthcare. Even education is diverging with mandates in FERPA and political business constraints. We have pretty effectively restricted supply, why exactly would we not expect an increase in cost?
That is from “Sure.”
On hitchhiking, circa 1969, from the comments
I hitchhiked across the U.S. twice in 1969. Here’s what my 18-year-old white, male, hippie self learned:
1. Expect to get picked up and propositioned by homosexuals.
2. Everybody is really interested in drugs and wants to get their hands on some.
3. Drugs quickly went from being the pastime of a small, hip elite, to becoming the obsession of trashy, low-class types.
4. Cowboys or anyone who identified with them wants to kill hippies.
5. Mexicans want to kill hippies.
6. It’s possible to sleep in an empty lot in Seattle or Portland, but in L.A., you will be harassed.
6. Panhandling is the world’s most humiliating activity.
7. Day labor is shockingly arduous.
8. America’s roadsides are a continuous scroll of accidental beauty, dramatic vignettes, and surreal occurrences.
9. Even a single night in a small town jail is awful enough to dissuade any sane person from ever committing or coming close to committing an imprisonable offense.
10. Jesus communes and Hare Krishna people will take you in and feed you when no one else will. But they have their own problems.
11. Iowa is surprisingly beautiful.
12. We thought because we all had long hair, we were all on the same wavelength – we weren’t.
12. There are lots of smart, interesting normal people out there, and from them you learn that the best thing in life is to follow the straight and narrow, observe social conventions, work a steady job, and avoid extremes.
That is from Faze.
On first world problems, from the comments
Airspace homogenuity is a 1st World gripe. Here’s some of my 3rd World concerns: do we have any more Philippine spitting cobras in our backyard? (We’ve killed two in the last year, one of them at 10:00 am in the outdoor kitchen, slithering up to somebody; it can shoot their venom up to 10 feet, kills many within 30 minutes, too short to make it to the hospital); are we going to run out of water in this rain forest climate that has no dams, though we just dug a second pressurized well?; does burning plastic (there’s no trash pickup here) cause cancer though we’ve taken precautions to build a big pit and stay upwind? (diesel fuel helps but it’s so rainy here it’s hard to burn anything); did the diseased bat that almost landed on my head carry Ebola or rabies (I have anti-rabies shots, but not Ebola)?; will the volcano erupt again and bury us with pyroclastic flow, like it almost did earlier this year (the magma the size of a football stadium that rolled down the mountainside was spectacular, I saw it when it happened); will our new concrete house get damaged by an earthquake (I think not, we used good concrete not the crumbly stuff they use here to save money), or a typhoon (we have a steel roof; the Philippines gets something like a dozen typhoons a year, and we’re in ‘typhoon alley’); will we have another power cut just when I’m typing this? (the PH regional power plant is geothermal, which sounds good but in fact is prone to breakdowns, a brownout for a few hours every week is common, and more common during rain, a coal-fired plant is actually more reliable and btw electricity costs are about 2-3x more than in the USA, and people here are poor). Why are fruits and vegetables so expensive here ($1 for an ordinary apple; 80 cents for a small fist sized greenish tomato or huge, dirt filled–it’s comical–carrot) and why won’t my next-of-kin eat them? (sad people here eat nothing but sugar, white rice, pork, chicken, and the bony talapia fish, all fried of course since nobody even sells ovens and the one oven I bought, imported, had a gas leak and is inoperative, serves me right for trying to buck custom and buying things knowing everything here is sold from First World county rejected equipment, I kid you not).
Those are Third World concerns, and it’s even worse in Africa. And this guy is complaining about what again? When people wish ill on the USA, it’s because of stuff like what this guy is concerned over.
That is from Ray Lopez, the first link being added by me.
That is all from B.B.