More about taxes

On Insiders this morning, PM Turnbull seemed to be following the line taken by John Quiggin that a GST increase, once you take into account the compensation to low income earners that would be needed for political palatability, probably doesn't raise money enough to make it worthwhile.  Chris Uhlmann reckons that an increased GST is already "dead, buried and yet to be cremated."

I suppose it does all depend on the amount of compensation.  But a few things:

a. that's why you go for the modest increase of 2.5%, not 5%.  You can get away more readily with inadequate compensation that way;

b. everyone's forgotten, but should be reminded, that pensioner compensation for the carbon tax was actually designed as over-compensation.  Tony Abbott (illogically, given the budget repair emergency he was also arguing) sold it as a "positive" that he was removing the carbon tax, but keeping the compensation.   In light of this history, a responsible government could argue for more modest compensation for pensioners for a GST increase;

c. if you keep the GST off fresh food, a government can also argue that, more than ever, there's an incentive for welfare recipients to move off processed food to more fresh food in their diet.  Hey - add a sugar tax on soft drinks, and you have an even better set of nudges towards welfare dependent families changing their diet! 

But, yes, it does appear that no politician is following my opinion, after all, despite the polling indicating that a GST increase to 15% has a 37% approval rating, and (obviously) that's before our charming PM has even tried to sell it.

Those figures indicate that a well argued case would easily see the Coalition being returned at the next election as the "responsible" side in repairing a the budget, with Labor as stuck in the past.

But no, let's avoid a relatively simple and obvious way to raise more revenue for another 3 years or so.

Taxes, etc

Paul Keating's endorsement of spending cuts may have given small government lovers a thrill, but how seriously one should take someone who was for a consumption tax before he was against it, and who had a budget cutting job in very different social and economic circumstances from the present, I don't know.  (See Peter Brent making the same point, in better detail.)

And even he thinks a modest GST increase tied to health funding is arguable.

I find all this debate back and forth a bit tedious, because I decided what is politically safe enough and reasonable back in September, and I'm just waiting for the politicians to catch on:

1.  a modest increase in the GST rate to 12.5%.   This is low enough to not really be noticed, but I'm pretty sure it still raises quite a lot.  As for its expansion - I would be inclined to leave it off fresh food, but wonder whether a reduced rate could be added to education services - say 5%?  OK, that would be a hard sell to Liberal constituents, but it might be something Labor could live with;

2.  superannuation tax concessions at the high end wound back harder;

3.  a staged reduction in negative gearing.  Not too staged.  And didn't I suggest once that it be time limited, to like for the first 5 years?   Increased turnaround in investment property sales would be good for stamp duty revenue too, as well as placing properties back on the market for potential owner/occupiers.   Someone needs to point out to me the downside, as there almost certainly would be one.  

 As for spending cuts:   it's a continual irony that Liberals and Republicans always claim there is a government spending emergency, while at the same time ramping up defence spending and using defence in some of the most expensive ways possible.

In the Australian context:   how tied are we really to the  F 35 purchase?  Why does it take a (Left) liberal (see Canada) to point out that you can get by with other, cheaper, fighters?   Is there scope to at least cut back the number we intend buying?

I would still build submarines here, though.   Forget about economic purism - supporting manufacturing abilities is a good thing, and shipbuilding seems a decent enough way to do that.

What about the cost of the paramilitary (and creepy fascistic Abbott idea) Border Force?   It would do a lot for the country's self image to dismantle it as soon as possible, especially if doing so has increased costs.

As for welfare spending:  I'm not sure if it is really worth it or not, and it would be mainly Sydney and Melbourne affected, but pensioners sitting in an expensive enough home - let's say $1,000,000 plus? - should face some formula for putting at least part of the value of their home into the assets test.

But as for taxes overall, let's not forget this point:

Update:   I've sort of grown tired of pointing out Senator Blofeld's "look at me" speeches to an empty Senate.   He isn't even proposing running again, so the publicity he craves is for just for his ego and his minuscule fan club.   Anyway, apparently progressive taxation is "immoral", despite what Popes and bishops  have maintained.

All in the mind

It's not about sex, it's about identity: why furries are unique among fan cultures | Fashion | The Guardian

Where else but the Guardian would you expect to find a sympathetic article about "furries" - people who really like to dress as animals - either realistic version animals, or cartoon version, apparently.

The article does say that it's not a sexual fetish for most (as was portrayed on a CSI episode which I happened to see), but it's still weird:

“People don’t realize it, but the whole anthropomorphism is very mainstream,” says Gerbasi, who spearheaded the multidisciplinary Anthropomorphic Research Project, which has studied about 7,000 furry fans from all continents, except Antarctica (which actually had a small furry gathering, too). While there are certain demographic trends – almost 80% are male, many work in science or tech, with a disproportionate share not identifying as heterosexual – the data, by and large, shows no indication that furries would be psychologically unhealthy.

“Cartoon animals have a universal appeal,” says Conway, who fursuits as ‘Uncle Kage’: a samurai cockroach. “A love of animals and a fascination with the idea of them acting as we do transcends most national, geographic and religious boundaries.”

While the fursuits are the most visible, they only make up only about 20% convention-goers, Conway adds: the rest are performers, writers, puppeteers, dancers, artists and “just plain old fans”.

For a minority, however, it is more than that: 46% of furry fans surveyed by Gerbasi reported identifying as less than 100% human – with 41% admitting that if they could be not human at all, they would. Twenty-nine percent of them reported experiencing being a “non-human species trapped in a human body”.

The parallels with gender identity disorder, upon which the hypothesis was modeled, were striking: much like some transgender individuals report being born the wrong sex, some furries feel a disconnect with their bodies, as if they were stuck in the wrong species. The condition, which Gerbasi et al labeled “species identity disorder”, had a physiological component too, with many reportingexperiencing phantom body parts, like tails or wings.

Gerbasi still has no answers to why these individuals feel they’re not human, but stresses the importance for health providers to take them seriously, and without the ridicule that sometimes afflicts even her own research.

What a world.  Sometimes it seems to me that no one is told these days that their self understanding is nutty and/or quite possibly transient and/or best not indulged.   Or at least not indulged in the way they want it indulged.

For those who like Richard Ayoade

I do wonder sometimes how much of Richard Ayoade's Moss-like comic persona as a socially uncomfortable uber-nerd, which he seems to carry into everything he does, is a bit of an act.   But I don't really care - I find him very funny regardless.   (I mean, who cared whether Jack Benny was really a tightwad, or not.)

I'm also not sure if his Travel Man series has been shown on SBS before.  But in any event, I've found that some kind English person seems to have recorded them and put the full length episodes on Youtube.  (I suspect they won't be allowed to stay there for long, however.)

I'm working my way through them, but so far, I think the one with fellow IT Crowd actor Chris O'Dowd is the best.  They really seem to enjoy each other's company, which is nice to see:

What? Why?

Microsoft testing underwater data centers ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

OK, it still doesn't quite convince me that the underwater hacking sequence in Mission Impossible 5 made any sense, but I am surprised nonetheless that this idea is even being trialled:

Microsoft on Monday revealed that as the world turns to computing
power in the cloud it is working to put data centers under water.

Researchers working on “Project Natick” tested a prototype vessel on
the ocean floor about a kilometer off the U.S. Pacific Coast for about
four months last year....

With about half of the world’s population living near large bodies of
water and a shift to accessing software hosted in the Internet cloud,
having data centers submerged nearby could save money and speed up
access to information, Microsoft reasoned.

Currents or tides can be tapped to generate electricity to power data centers, and the cold depths provide natural cooling.

“Deepwater deployment offers ready access to cooling, renewable power sources, and a controlled environment,” Whitaker said.

 Very odd, if you ask me...

Well, that's OK then...

Riyadh spares Palestinian ‘apostate’ from beheading | GulfNews.com: Riyadh: A court in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday revised the punishment given to a stateless Palestinian poet convicted of apostasy, reducing it from death to eight years in prison, 800 lashes and public repentance, his lawyer said.

The poet, Ashraf Fayadh, had been sentenced to beheading because of the apostasy conviction announced in November, based partly on his published poetry.

Krugman on Rubio

Well, in my pre-Iowa notes I called the Republican primary right:

I know what will happen on the Republican side: someone horrifying will come in first, and someone horrifying will come in second.

Let me add that someone horrifying also came in third. Marco Rubio may seem less radical than Cruz or Trump, but his substantive policy positions are for incredibly hawkish foreign policy, wildly regressive tax policy, kicking tens of millions of people off health insurance, and destroying the environment. Other than that, he’s a moderate.

Link.  

Seems it will be worth seeing

Critic Reviews for Hail, Caesar! - Metacritic

Now that I expect to live to 120, I should revise my superannuation

Researchers extend lifespan by as much as 35 percent in mice

Morally offensive

The questions the ABC did not ask

Seriously, I find the gung-ho Andrew Bolt attitude of "I blame everyone but the government for what happens when you lock hundreds of people, including children, together on a hot rock of an island for years with no hope of satisfactory resolution;  oh, and are those kids really being raped and self harming anyway - I have my doubts" expressed in this column to be pretty damn offensive for its moral triteness.   And pretty dumb, given the experience of allegations made against Save the Children workers.  

Update:  with a High Court "win" for the government, the moral question of the extent to which you can justify the continuing punishment of one set of people (particularly children) to act as a  deterrent to others from attempting to enter the country in a particular way is one which is now clearly "owned" by Malcolm Turnbull, and any politician with a sense of morality.   One suspects he would have been relieved by a High Court decision against the government on this, but no such luck.

Nasty way to go

Elephant in Thailand kills British tourist in front of his teenage daughter | Home News | News | The Independent

I wouldn't have thought there was much danger of this happening on a tourist elephant ride.  And statistically, I suppose there isn't.  But it would still make me reconsider getting on the back of one for fun.

Kind of funny

San Francisco's tech bros told: get out of the gayborhood | US news | The Guardian

From the link:

When Cleve Jones, a longtime gay activist who led the creation of the Aids Memorial Quilt, went to his local gay bar in the Castro district, he saw something that shocked him.

“The tech bros had taken over The Mix. They commanded the pool table and the patio. These big, loud, butch guys. It was scary,” he said. “I’m not heterophobic, but I don’t want to go to a gay bar and buy some guy a drink and have him smirk and tell me he’s straight. They can go
anywhere. We can’t.”

Residents of San Francisco’s historically gay Castro district are worried that it’s changing, as speculators come in to flip the few remaining ramshackle old Victorians and the old-timer gay bars shutter. In a recent small survey, 77% of people who have lived in the neighborhood for 10 or more years identified as gay, while only 55% of those who moved in the past year did.

One would have thought that gay activists would welcome this as a sign of the normalisation of homosexual relationships;  they no longer need their special enclaves.  But no, they can be very hard to please...

My Kitchen Rules and comedy writing

It's all artifice, I'm sure, but watching early episodes of My Kitchen Rules makes for particularly amusing viewing in terms of watching how the "baddies" are identified and play up to their allocated role for the season.

This year's team are a full on "11" on the annoyance factor scale - married, rich, young, gym fit lawyers.  (Well, apparently they are, because it is hard to believe that practising lawyers - he looks like a barrister? - would make themselves such easy targets for ridicule if they are working in the public eye each day.)   As Ben Pobjie - always the funniest Fairfax reviewer of this show - accurately writes, this is how Zana plays her role:

Zana reacts to the menu the way she reacts to everything: by sticking her lips out a metre in front of her face and looking like she's just been asked to bathe in urine. Zana thinks the menu is too simple. Zana thinks the human race is too simple. Zana is so sophisticated it's taking all her self-control to not spit on everyone at the table. Zana gets a look at the entrée and there is no vinegar on her rocket, which means "it's just lettuce", which means her mouth is now twisted into such a vicious sneer she's in danger of dislocating her jaw. Though why someone who doesn't know the difference between lettuce and rocket should act so superior I couldn't tell you....Zana is also no fan of the chips. She prefers her own chips. "Whose are better?" she asks Gianni, the threat of castration implied in her eyes. He agrees that his wife's chips are better than the strangers' chips, and Zana resumes sucking her invisible lemon with a look of triumph.

Funny stuff.

X Files noted

A few quick comments on last night's short season opener for X Files in Australia:

*  I don't think Channel Ten could possibly have done more to attempt to ruin the atmosphere of the show, what with its advertising of Shane Warne and the execrable "I'm a Celebrity" show  running along the foot of the screen after every ad break.   Way to make people really hate you, Ten...

*  Look, I still like the actors and the re-visiting of old conspiracies, but the whole problem with the main conspiracy in the show being the alien/human hybrid stuff was that it never made sense as to why it was being done and to what end.  I'm not at all sure that re-visiting this aspect of the series is at all wise, but that seems to be where we are heading.

*  Scully's hairstyle was hardly flattering.  

*  Still, I'll be watching it again tonight, even while I grind my teeth about Channel Ten.

Monday quantum science

[1512.08275] The Too-Late-Choice Experiment: Bell's Proof within a Setting where the Nonlocal Effect's Target is an Earlier Event

This seems relevant to what Sabine was saying at Backreaction recently about free will and the quantum world, although (of course) I am not sure exactly sure what retrocausality means for free will.  The abstract:

In the EPR experiment, each measurement addresses the question "What spin
value has this particle along this orientation?" The outcome then proves that
the spin value has been affected by the distant experimenter's choice of spin
orientation. We propose a new setting where the question is reversed: "What is
the orientation along which this particle has this spin value?" It turns out
that the orientation is similarly subject to nonlocal effects. To enable the
reversal, each particle's interaction with a beam-splitter at t1 leaves its
spin orientation superposed. Then at t2, the experimenter selects an "up" or
"down" spin value for this yet-undefined orientation. Only after the two
particles undergo this procedure, the two measurements are completed, each
particle having its spin value along a definite orientation. By Bell's theorem,
it is now the "choice" of orientation that must be nonlocally transmitted
between the particles upon completing the measurement. This choice, however,
has preceded the experimenter's selection. This seems to lend support for the
time-symmetric interpretations of QM, where retrocausality plays a significant
role. We conclude with a brief comparison between these interpretations and
their traditional alternatives, Copenhagen, Bohmian mechanics and the Many
Worlds Interpretation. 

A review of an interesting sounding book

Paul Krugman Reviews ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth’ by Robert J. Gordon - The New York Times

Here's what it's about:

Robert J. Gordon, a distinguished macro­economist and economic historian at Northwestern, has been arguing for a long time against the techno-optimism that saturates our culture, with its constant assertion that we’re in the midst of revolutionary change. Starting at the height of the dot-com frenzy, he has repeatedly called for perspective.  Developments in information and communication technology, he has
insisted, just don’t measure up to past achievements. Specifically, he has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication.

In “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Gordon doubles down on that theme, declaring that the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of
those inventions — a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave, and Gordon doesn’t expect us ever to see anything similar.

Over him, at last

About time the public got over Tarantino, the most undeservedly praised director/writer of my lifetime, I reckon.  

Too hot for Interstellar?

OK, I still haven't seen Interstellar (I've read too much about it that puts me off, but I'll get around to it one day), but it seems that the whole physics set up (giant planet around a black hole "star") gets the details wrong, after all.  (Not sure what Kip Thorne, the physicist who came up with the movie scenario, thinks of this.)

From New Scientist:

Wondering if any more power might be available, the team turned to the film Interstellar, in which a world called Miller’s planet orbits very close to a massive, spinning black hole called Gargantua. General relativity means the black hole’s gravitational pull slows time on the planet so that 1 hour is equal to seven years off-world, a factor of around 60,000.
“We saw the movie, it was a very interesting idea, but then we started thinking about the problems,” says Opatrný.
The energy of light is proportional to its frequency. This means that when light from the CMB hits Miller’s planet, and its frequency is increased by this time dilation, its energy increases. With a time-dilation factor of around 60,000, Miller’s planet would be heated to nearly 900 ˚C.
In the film, the planet is swept by huge tidal waves of water, but Opatrný says his calculations mean molten aluminium would be more likely. Conditions would be cooler if the planet were slightly further out from the black hole, lessening the effects of time dilation and making it more hospitable to life. “It’s interesting that [the analysis] suggests the microwave background would be disastrous for observers on the planet, making the movie once again less realistic,” says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University.

For those who like reading about Scruton

A Very British Hatchet Job - The Los Angeles Review of Books

Here's another review of Roger Scruton's recent book, which I have noted previously.  

Toilet espionage

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement' - BBC News

Remarkable (if true):

Mr Atamanenko claims that in December 1949, Soviet spies used this system to evaluate the Chinese leader Mao Zedong who was on a visit to Moscow. They had allegedly installed special toilets for Mao, which were connected not to sewers, but to secret boxes.

For 10 days Mao was plied with food and drink and his waste products whisked off for
analysis. Once Mao's stools had been scrutinised and studied, Stalin reportedly poo poo-ed the idea of signing an agreement with him.