(no subject)

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How so?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Firstly revenue generated from income taxes hasn't been steady.

Hauser's Law doesn't concern itself only with income tax revenue, so this is not a rational rebuttal.

Secondly you ignore revenue from corporate taxation and other forms of taxation.

You're arguing against a WSJ editorial that I didn't link, not anything I've said.

Thirdly, there are myriad examples of other nations capable of taxing significantly higher levels of GDP than we do (incidentally with similar standards of living).

The argument is solely about the US here. I made no commentary about foreign nations.

Fourthly, since you refer to it as a law it implies some sort of physical limit on revenues and as such we simply can't generate the revenues we need and need to reduce our spending accordingly.

Historically, it is shown that we cannot. You have yet to refute this.

So yeah Hauser's law isn't a law, it wasn't derived from economics, and is in fact complete bullshit.

When you prove this, then you can call it bullshit, not before.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Ahh so Hauser's law is in fact not an economic law since it isn't a universal. Thanks for disproving your point for me bro!

I don't recall claiming Hauser's Law was an economic law. Can you point out where I did?

See the area that exceeds 19.5%? That disproves 'Hauser's Law'.

I think you may need to read up a little more on Hauser's law (http://books.google.com/books?id=X7zLmIK1HgEC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&source=bl&ots=Gwf7fTg5vT&sig=0KkZ3ImfLCEDnGSp70Fh50Xhoak&hl=en&ei=AYPzS8bAKoOdlgf1ocT8DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false).

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Hauser claimed it as one bro. Nice try.

Where did he do that?

Seriously you haven't the foggiest clue what you're talking about have you?

I'm starting to wonder if I should be asking you that question, considering how much you've failed so far.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So he never said it, and you're just assuming. Gotcha.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I see it as simply a statement of history.

[farchivist.livejournal.com]

He greatly implied it, but Hauser is also well-known for utilizing weasel words and massaging data. (http://www.presimetrics.com/blog/?p=241)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Well, when you base your positions on facts, it's hard not to be.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Facts only become troublesome when they're manipulated. I'm not really big on empiricism at all - I'm more of the historicism school.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

History relies on empirical data does it not? It's not like we're intuiting history.

My understanding of empiricism is that it's based more along experiences and less along evidence-based information lines, which is my preference. It results in less biased and less ideologically-based interpretations, since experiences and anecdata aren't so much of the equation.

Obviously, it has its flaws, especially in areas with limited documentation, but no one school of thought is perfect - it's more finding the most sensible one.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

However history as I understand your conception to be still could be interpreted as empiricism since it isn't derived subjectively but intersubjectively. IE The scientific method that leads to consensus. We are not certain of what is true but we come closer and closer to better aproximating reality.

...kinda? In that empirical skills might be used to interpret history where the facts are unclear/unreliable, sure. I don't know if the scientific method analogy is apt if only because you're not experimenting with history as much as taking what's there.

My issue with empiricism is that it lends itself far too often to the "this was my experience/this is how I've done it, thus this is what's true" idea. It's the worst form of confirmation bias in a way, because it doesn't lend itself much to self-reflection, and tends to result in ego/personality results over substance, not to mention introduces a lot of identity politics in inconsistent ways.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Note, that is not an "economic paper" it is not a peer-reviewed published article. It is a book published by a conservative think tank.

Doing an evaluation like the one he did is extremely risky since so many things change that are dependent on one another.

For instance if we change the top marginal rate but increase other rates and end up with the same tax revenue can we discern a revenue change from the effects of the tax?

A: No, a statistical analysis will show that there was "no correlation" between the various effects since they happened at the same time and had offsetting effects. There is no way to tease the relevant data out of that

The primary problem then is that those tax changes (and many tax changes) were intended to be revenue neutral. I.E. if the tax changes were successful then we could not possibly see the effect that he wants to claim doesn't exist because we intentionally raised revenue by increasing tax rates in other areas while lowering the tax rate in the one he wants to study!

It should also be noted that Clinton did see a large spike in revenues from his tax increases that could not be explained solely by the increase in production that occurred at the end of the 92-93 recession. Such Hauser's prediction that this would not happen was wrong, falsifying his theory right there.

We also have the significant reduction in revenues from the Bush tax cuts to show how this was wrong. And we can't explain that because of a slump in GDP, 2001 was the end of a recession and we were on the uptick! Revenues should have increased but instead decreased! We lost a total of 3.2% of revenues as a result (I.E. revenues should have grown by 1.5%, instead they fell by 1.7%)

And they fell again the next two years! Making the total single year shortfall at the end of three years nearly 2% of GDP per year.

I.E. if we had not had the Bush tax cuts revenues would have been ~2% of GDP higher in 2004 than they were. That is massive!

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

To be more specific the exact problem we are dealing with here which drives a lot of Hauser's analysis is high correlation of the exogeneous variables.

The easiest way to think of this(i think) is to think of "perfectly correlated" variables and "independent" variables as existing on a continuum with each at diametrically opposed ends.

If you want to determine the correlation between one variable and two others if the two others are perfectly independent then it is very easy to see the effect of one or the other on the variable we want to examine. But if the two variables are perfectly correlated with each other they will act as if they are one variable in our analysis.

Such when some effects (increases in the tax rate) are accompanied by other effects(decreases in the tax rate in other areas) or vice versa what you get is the overall effect of both combined when looking at the effect of either.

Because Hauser did not do a rigorous study and instead simply eyed data and likely (i have not read the papers he cited) analysis which notes those issues he came to an incorrect conclusion.