How would Frank Luntz frame Warren Buffett's Tax Debate?
The Secretary-Billionaire Tax Equality Principle
Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed recently that suggested that the top 0.3% of yearly earners were paying too little in taxes.
One of his favorite illustrations of this point is that his secretary pays a much higher tax rate that he does.
His prescription is:
undefined cuts to entitlement programs
higher taxes on the top 0.3%
The Power of Framing
The idea that a secretary should not pay a higher tax rate than their billionaire boss
is hard to argue with and shows the power of "framing".
Here's an other tax framing idea:
It is often said that we don't want to push the burden of current spending onto future generations.
Reihan Salam: During the Bush years, it was often said that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
represented redistribution from future taxpayers to current taxpayers.
You might reframe this as:
Those older Americans, who can afford it, should not get a better deal their grandchildren's generation
In late 2006, A List Apart had an article about "Adaptive Layout",
which they described as an improvement over liquid CSS layouts because it is optimized for multiple
screen resolutions and adjusts automatically.
I was intrigued, so I decided to experiment with an adaptive blog template that automatically
adjusts itself to different screen resolutions, from an iPhone to a 1920x1200 monitor.
The result isn't very "polished", but I finally got around to posting my own
"adaptive blog layout", which uses javascript to tell the browser to use a different body css class, depending upon the reader's screen resolution.
Future Improvements
The template could be improved by paying better attention to the most common
browser resolutions and developing grid-based versions tailored to specific
resolutions. I did the opposite -- I started with the content and defined CSS
rules to fit my text and images.
Last year the New York times had a short article proposing that instead of thinking
about fuel economy in "miles per gallon", we should think about
"gallons
per mile".
The reasoning behind this poposals is that stating fuel economy in MPG
"leads consumers to significantly underestimate the gains in fuel efficiency
that can be achieved by trading in very low m.p.g. vehicles — even for
one that gets only a few more miles per gallon."
Larrick emphasizes that his long-term goal is to get everyone into the most fuel-efficient vehicles that exist. But right now, he says, “as a national-policy question, the urgency is getting people out of the 14-m.p.g. vehicles.” And m.p.g. ratings aren’t the most useful prod, largely because the real significance of differences in m.p.g. is often counterintuitive. The jump from 10 to 20 m.p.g., for example, saves more gas than the one from 20 to 40 m.p.g. The move from 10 to 11 m.p.g. can save nearly as much as the leap from 33 to 50 m.p.g.
People often scoff at the idea of hybrid trucks or SUVs like the Cadillac Escalade that only
improve MGP from 14 to 20. But if you do the math, over 10,000 miles, this decreases
the number of gallons used from 714 gallons to 500 gallons. This is a savings of
214 gallons,
By comparison improving a Toyota Prius's mileage from 46MPG to 70MG only saves
75 gallons over 10,000 miles.
Here is the comparison of "miles per gallon" (MPG) and "gallons per 10,000 miles" (GP10K):
Vehicle
MPG
GP10K
Cadillac Escallade AWD
14
714
Cadillac Escallade Hybrid
20
500
Toyota Prius
46
217
Hypothetical Hybrid
70
143
To illustrate the point further, I put together a spreadsheet
using actual fuel economy figures for some current models, along with some extreme cases.
On the same day that I read an
article reporting that the Federal Reserve minutes from the March 17-18 meeting
showed that members expressed such great concern that the Fed decided to pump 1 trillion
more dollars into the system,
I also heard news reporting that things are looking a lot better, with some even preparing to
declare victory.
I would think the memory of Iraq should be recent enough that we wouldn't
immediately accept statements saying that we have turned the corner on the financial system,
especially without strong evidence that the fundamentals of the crisis have
changed.
Profits from Easy Money (excluding losses)
One statistic that people use to support the optimistic view is
Wells Fargo's projected $3 billion quarterly earnings, but these figures may
include temporary profits caused by refinancing, and exclude some losses.
To convince me further, I would
want to know why Wells Fargo's charge-offs on bad loans and loss provisions were below expectations.
I would also want to know that the Option ARM portfolio it acquired from Wachovia isn't
about to hemorrhage losses. Housingwire says the decision to take
fewer charge-offs accounts
for a significant portion of these "profits".
Simon Johnson says that we shouldn't just be looking at the stock market. While
the stock market may be rising, the debt market is indicating a
higher probability of defaults.
Defending the Private-Public "Partnership"
I have yet to hear a persuasive response to criticism that
the "Public/Private Partnership" can easily be manipulated
in a way that allows banks to inflate the prices of assets
and offload a significant portion of losses on taxpayers. When banks and related parties
can participate in the purchase of these assets, the process is ripe for abuse.
There are several
examples
of how this could be accomplished circulating presently.
Also note that the flaws in the bailout process would likely to be a
positive for bank stocks. Newsweek says that Citigroup is buying up
more toxic assets in anticipation that they will be able to game the system.
Optimistic Assets
These critiques suggest that the loses the banks have are not likely to be recognized, meaning the
banks will likely refuse to sell unless they receive an offer
that comes close to the value they hold on their books.
Indeed, though Bank of New York Mellon may be in a different class than some of its peers
(I don't know), Robert Siegal's interview
with bank CEO Robert Kelly produced a good soundbite for what will likely be some of
his fellow banker's positions:
Robert Siegal: What are we going to call toxic assets which
banks decide are so good that they want to hang onto? Bob Kelly: Perhaps optimistic assets (7:20 min)
And to throw in another possibility: subsidized and gamed assets.
2 Views on the Crisis
Ultimately there are two views of the crisis:
A Liquidity Problem: Individuals and institutions may be short on cash,
but they're "Good for it". Their assets are worth more than their liabilities, and we
just need to "unthaw" the credit system.
A Solvency Problem: Individuals and institutions have too much debt and will be
unable to pay their debts without implicit guarantees from the government and other forms of assistance
(or to use a less generous term, more "bailouts").
Future economic growth we be reduced because these
"zombie" banks will have to be recapitalized; and
consumption won't be able to quickly recover to past levels, reducing future corporate earnings.
If this is a crisis of the first type, positive cash flow should indicate that the crisis is
abating. If it is the latter type of crisis, we won't know where we stand until we
can get a better sense of what those "optimistic assets" are worth.
Unfortunately, I don't see how we will know the value of the assets, even after they have been
"priced" by the "market" because of the presence of subsidies, gaming, and the unknown future
performance of those assets. Merely having a "price" does not solve the problem unless the
price is credible or unless the goal is simply to move the "assets" from the private
balance sheets to the the taxpayers.
Not Considered Insolvent
One final note: on re-reading the original Time Magazine
"The Banking Crisis is Over"
piece I was struck by this sentence:
"There is enough evidence
in comments from the CEOs of Citi and B of A and in the Wells Fargo earnings
to show that the idea that banks are insolvent and probably in need of
nationalization is no longer part of the consideration of how the problems with
the system will be settled."
Really? Is that sufficient evidence? Wells Fargo may have a real quarterly profit, and various
CEOs may be saying positive things, but how does that show that the entire banking industry is solvent?
Solvency is independent of quarterly profits,
especially given the circumstances under which these "profits" are projected.
It sounded to me as though the author is saying that the banks are obviously solvent,
but if you read more closely,
you will see that he is actually saying something more subtle: that the possibility the
banks are not solvent is not being considered as an option.
I'm more inclined to believe that the full extent of the financial crisis
is like a iceberg, still lurking under water. The size of the iceberg is finite
and we may even be able to say that it won't grow larger (I don't know),
but how will we know when we understand the full size of the problem?
I've traded emails with the author of the Time piece, and he seems to think that I
am missing the point of his piece: the crisis is
behind us and, although the remaining piece is large, the rest is a
multi-year $1 trillion plus "reclamation" job. I hope so, but I would be surprised.
The last two numbers in the movie value url represent the start and end time (253/399) in seconds.
The important part of this syntax is that it allows anyone to go back to the previous part of the clip to see
it in full context. It also allows the viewer to continue on to view the rest of the video. It becomes clearer
where the truth lies when someone argues about misquoting.
Now the next step in referenceable "television" is a way to combine a series of embedded clips together and retain the links back to the original.
That would allow anyone to create mashups similar to the ones produced by the Daily Show.
First of all, I think the WWW was a brilliant simplification. As I understand it, and maybe I have this wrong, but Tim Berners-Lee came and we had lunch, in, oh I guess it was 1989, 90, something like that, in Sausalito, and I really liked the guy, and he'd done this very simple thing, and it sounded too trivial to me {laughs} but he certainly was a nice fellow and I expected to keep in touch with him, although I am a very bad correspondent, and the next thing I knew suddenly the thing had caught on.
.. What would I recommend to a young visionary today? {laughter} Very straightforward, learn to deal with short term goals and not delegate.
I don't like his interface but I do very much like the concept. What I find puzzling is that this paradigm could be implemented using current web standards so why did he make this new program with an interface that's entirely foreign to us.
I don't think Xanadu will catch on but everything he demonstrated will eventually make it into browsers and websites, but at a much slower pace than Mr. Nelson is comfortable with.
And although most communities treat their members with gentle regard, Reddit prides itself on winnowing the wheat from the chaff. It relies on the collective judgment of its members, who click on arrows next to contributions, elevating insightful or interesting content, and demoting less worthy contributions. Even Mills says he was impressed by the way in which redditors "marshaled their collective bits of expert knowledge to arrive at a conclusion that was largely correct." It's tough to con Reddit.
Don’t scale too early. This is the No. 1 cause of startup failure. Startup Compass has found that 70% of startups crash because they scale prematurely.
Don’t work part time. Sleepy? Get used to it. People who work full time on their startups raise an average of 24 times more funding than those who work part time.
Don’t go it alone. Maybe you are the smartest guy in the room. But solo founders raise less than half the money that two to three co-founders raise.
Don’t ignore customers. Yes, they’re annoying. (What do they know?) But startups that track customer metrics have 400% more user growth.
Don’t forget about the technology. Startups without a tech-oriented co-founder are twice as likely to scale prematurely and have three to five times less user growth.
In 1792, French citizenship was bestowed upon George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Thomas Paine served in the French National Convention.
Once a --reintegrate merge is done from branch to trunk, the branch is no longer usable for further work. It's not able to correctly absorb new trunk changes, nor can it be properly reintegrated to trunk again. For this reason, if you want to keep working on your feature branch, we recommend destroying it and then re-creating it from the trunk:
$ svn delete http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/branches/my-calc-branch \
-m "Remove my-calc-branch, reintegrated with trunk in r391."
Committed revision 392.
"Our study has shown a new and potent effect of lithium in increasing the amplitude, or strength, of the clock rhythms, revealing a novel link between the classic mood-stabiliser, bipolar disorder and body clocks," said lead researcher Dr Qing-Jun Meng, in the University's Faculty of Life Sciences.
.. "Our findings are important for two reasons: firstly, they offer a novel explanation as to how lithium may be able to stabilise mood swings in bipolar patients; secondly, they open up opportunities to develop new drugs for bipolar disorder that mimic and even enhance the effect lithium has on GSK3 without the side-effects lithium salts can cause."
Subversion Branch/Merge can cause quite a few headaches when working with SVN. We created this tutorial to lay down some easy to follow best practices and instruction for successfully branching and merging in your subversion projects
There’s also the fact that Conard applies a relentless, mathematical logic to nearly everything, even finding a good spouse. He advocates, in utter seriousness, using demographic data to calculate the number of potential mates in your geographic area. Then, he says, you should set aside a bit of time for “calibration” — dating as many people as you can so that you have a sense of what the marriage marketplace is like. Then you enter the selection phase, this time with the goal of picking a permanent mate. The first woman you date who is a better match than the best woman you met during the calibration phase is, therefore, the person you should marry. By statistical probability, she is as good a match as you’re going to get. (Conard used this system himself.)
.. One of the great political and economic challenges of our time is figuring out the balance between wealth that benefits society and wealth that distorts.
It's not always bad to make a class require another, but it strongly depends on what your goal is. In this example, I show you a good way to use composition in PHP Object Oriented Design (OOD). Inheritance is not the life-blood of OOP, yes it has it's uses. However, it's better to favor composition over inheritance.
FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news.
.. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices.
So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation.
Take Google, Facebook and Twitter, for example. Those companys’ consumers and customers are different populations. The consumers are the users. The customers are the advertisers. In fact, our consumption is what’s sold to advertisers. “If it’s free, then you’re the product,” the saying goes. It’s not exactly right, but it’s close enough to make some points, one of which is that your influence on those companies is far less than it would be if you were paying for services rather than merely using (or consuming) them.
Although psychology has always been one of the three major fields with a ‘stake’ in hypertext, this interest has often been manifested through the applied field of human-computer interaction (HCI) or human factors.
.. As even non-psychologists have occasionally noted, psychological problems are often more responsible for the failure of effective system use than technical problems.
It’s tricky to maintain this kind of thing over the long haul. There’s a great book by Will Kaufman called “The Comedian as Confidence Man,” which examines the careers of American satirists from Mark Twain to Lenny Bruce, and finds that nearly all of them eventually succumb to what Kaufman calls “irony fatigue.” This arises, he says, from the frustration that comes from trying to engage in sincere social or political critique while having to maintain that one is “only kidding” in order to continue to be heard. If Colbert suddenly “turned serious” — owned up to having a sincere purpose — he would no longer be granted the kind of indulgence he gets as a comedian.
Maybe it’s as Travolta told me: Actors like himself and Jackson go see their own movies to see themselves invested onscreen with all those human qualities they fear they don’t possess themselves.
Marilyn Monroe wanted to prove a point. It was a sunny summer day in New York City, 1955. With a magazine editor and a photographer in tow, Marilyn walked down into Grand Central Terminal. Though it was the middle of a busy workday and the platform was packed with people, not a single person noticed her as she stood waiting for the subway. As the photographer’s camera clicked, she boarded the train and rode along quietly in a corner of the car. Nobody recognized her.
