Loopholes

September 12, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

Romney has promised broad tax cuts and a reduction in the deficit.  But the only way you can reduce tax rates for everyone and maintain the same amount of tax coming in is to close tax “loopholes.”  Which is what Romney said he would do.  The only trouble is that when it comes to which loopholes, he’s keeping that a secret.  (When it comes to specifics about taxes, Romney apparently has a don’t-tell policy.)

If Romney wanted to identify a few loopholes, he’d have a very wide choice.  The tax code is huge and complicated, and it is full of tax breaks. The Washington Post recently posted this interactive graphic that allows you to mouse through the mountain of tax expenditures* and see when each was created, how much it costs the government, and whether the money benefits mostly to individuals or to companies. 

Here’s a screen shot.

(Click on the image for a larger, clearer view.  Better yet, go to the WaPo Website.)

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* Some people have a hard time understanding the idea of “tax expenditure” especially at the individual level.  But from the perspective of the bottom line, it should be clear that forgoing money by not collecting a billion dollars in taxes has the same effect on the deficit as spending a billion dollars.

Reducing Poverty

September 11, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

The poverty rate in the US in the mid-2000s was about 17%.  In Sweden, the poverty rates was 5.3%; in Germany, 11%.   That was the rate after adding in government transfers.  In Germany, the poverty rate before those transfers was 33.6%, ten points higher than that in the US.  Sweden’s pre-transfer poverty rate was about the same as ours.

Jared Bernstein has this chart showing pre-transfer and post-transfer rates for the OECD countries.

(Click on the chart for a larger view.  Or see it at Jared Bernstein's blog.)

Three  points:

1.  Governments have the power to reduce poverty, and reduce it a lot.  European governments do far more towards this goal than does the US government.

2.  It’s unlikely that America’s poor people are twice as lazy or unskilled or dissolute as their European counterparts.  Individual factors may explain differences between individuals, but these explanations have little relevance for the problem of overall poverty.  The focus on individual qualities also has little use as a basis for policy.  European countries have fewer people living in poverty, but not because those countries exhort the poor to lead more virtuous lives and punish them for their improvident ways.  European countries have lower poverty rates because the governments provide money and services to those who need them. 

3.  The amount of welfare governments provide does not appear to have a dampening effect on the overall economy.

Names and Character

September 8, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

Tough uses the word “grit” a lot.

In today’s Times (here), Joe Nocera writes about a book, How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough.  Mr. Tough recommends that schools teach not just reading and math but “character” – traits like “resilience, integrity, resourcefulness, professionalism, and ambition.”

In the past few years, some psychologists have published peer-reviewed papers supposedly showing a relation between names and life choices or behavior. Dennis becomes dentist, George becomes a geologist and moves to Georgia.  It sounds silly, and it is. The research doesn’t hold up.  Andrew Gelman (here) has written about it. So have I (here).

But even when you know the systematic evidence, the anecdotal data jumps out at you. Like Mr. Tough and grit. 

Having endured “I presume” my entire life, I sympathize with Mr. Tough for the “jokes” he must have tired of long ago.  I just hope that the research on grit and schools is better than the research on names and personal choices.

What Is This Thing Called, Love?

September 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

Talk about sex often is often oblique and ambiguous.  In the early days of computerized content analysis, I knew some researchers who were trying to code ethnographic folk tales for sexual content.  The trouble was that pre-literate storytellers as well often preferred the vague to the explicit, much to the frustration of the researchers.  How can you  write a program that can distinguish between the nonsexual and sexual meanings of words like “it” or “thing”* (“And then he took out his thing and did it to her”)?

I was reminded of this when I read Philip Cohen’s post and N-gram graph about “make love” and “have sex.”

(Click on the graph for a larger view.)

“Sex” takes off starting around 1970, “love” rises more slowly and after 1990 declines, while “sex” continues to climb. 

I don’t think Philip meant to imply that there’s has been a trend towards less love and more sex.  My guess is that what we’re looking at is the decline of “love” as a euphemism for “sex.”  Prior to 1950 or so, “make love” was an innocent or slightly naughty term without much connotation of explicit sex.  The added sexual meaning that grew in later decades made the term ambiguous.  In 1960, with Hollywood self-censorship still strong, the film title “Let’s Make Love” with Marilyn Monroe raised no eyebrows. 

 By 1974, when Roberta Flack sang, “Feel Like Making Love to You,” things were less clear.

When you talk to me
When you're moanin’ sweet and low
When you're touchin’ me
And my feelings start to show
Oo-oo-ooh
That's the time
I feel like makin’ love to you.

 The pre-1970 “make love” line of the graph is carrying both meanings,  the sexual and the romantic.  But with the sexual revolution in full swing, some of the purely sexual references shift from the “make love” curve to the “have sex” curve.

That doesn’t mean that “have sex” became the preferred term.  Even for sexual references, “make love” may still be more popular.  For some reason, that sexual meaning is clearer when the phrase is in the past tense.  “Let’s make love,” is ambiguous.  “We made love” is more explicit.  And when you compare “We made love” with “We had sex,” the winner is still love.

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*The title of this post is an old Benny Hill line (based on Cole Porter of course).  It was probably luv rather than love, but in any case, the word thing here is another example of ambiguous language when we talk – or don’t talk –  about sex.