Will Lie for $$$

The people providing political commentary on US TV are extraordinarily wealthy. As far as I can tell, they're all in the top tax bracket.

As a result, their opinions are necessarily coloured by that fact. Even the honest ones (a list which appears to be quite short) will give you the news filtered through the lens of its impact on them. So you cannot easily get much useful information about its impact on you. And many of them (I'm looking especially at some people on Fox News and CNBC) will lie right to camera if they think it will make them better off.

Their alarmism makes people make bad decisions. Instead of debunking the bad decisions they've caused, these parasites will encourage them. The lesson is threefold:

• You can't trust main-stream media. At all. Ever.⁽¹⁾


• You have to work things out for yourself. ⁽²⁾


• You can't trust main-stream media. At all. Ever.

1. Watch them by all means, but always assume that every word comes with an agenda, and make sure you understand how the person you're watching (and the people they work for) are lining their own pockets. Follow, as the saying goes, the money. They will tell you what's good for them, not what's good for you. They will tell you what's bad for them, not what's bad for you. They will exploit you.


2. That's a nuisance. There are plenty of sources of good information online, but there are plenty of bad sources of information, too. You have to equip yourself at least well enough to tell a good argument from a bad one, and read more than one source of information.

There's a major case in point on income tax. And it's not just the cable news and finance guys that you have to watch out for - networks and the newspapers are doing it too.

They're exploiting dumb people. They want you to be dumb too.

Specifically, one thing that's got me cranky is the way the media has been playing up stories about people trying to earn less than $250,000 in order to pay less tax (as discussed in several of the links). Instead of doing the responsible thing - explain the actual situation - they're encouraging you to misunderstand.

Most of my readers are very smart, so I'm probably stating the obvious, but let's look at what's going on.

Most western countries have a progressive tax system. That means that as you earn more, you pay a higher percentage of your income in tax (however, as you earn more, your ability to shift income in ways that lowers your tax rate also goes up, so it's sometimes not progressive at all).

This happens by there being progressively higher tax rates on the amount you earn above particular threshholds, creating what are called "tax brackets"

In the US in 2008, the top marginal tax rate (the amount you pay on your last dollar) was 35%. But the average tax rate for everybody is below that. What's happening is that the two highest marginal tax rates for those with the highest incomes in the US will in 2010 go ... back to what the highest two marginal rates were in 2000. That's all.

The very, very highest incomes will - in 2010 - be paying 39.6% on their last dollar.

The total (or average) tax rates for 2008 look like this (public domain image by Dejo):


What's happening is that in 2010, the green line will move up a bit, but in fact most people in the US will actually pay a little less tax - the red and black lines will only be higher up the right hand end - and most people are quite a way left of the middle of the graph).

Guess what? I already pay more than 39.6%. My marginal tax rate here in Australia is 40% (and it's recently gone down - I was paying 42%). If I was earning my current income in the US, I'd be paying 25%, not 40%. I pay a higher marginal rate of tax than every Rick Santelli in the US. Actually, if you include the way some of the government benefits reduce with income (something I strongly support), my effective marginal tax rate (impact of the last dollar I earn) is actually a fair bit higher than 40%.

The top marginal income tax rate here is 45% - oh, and there's also a consumption tax.

I experience very little disincentive to earn an extra dollar of income, even though I am paying a higher marginal rate of tax than everybody in the US will be paying, even after the tax changes come in. (The biggest disincentive I experience is simply the marginal cost in time, a far more scarce resource to me than money.)

I don't feel like I pay "too much" tax. I drive on roads. My kids go to school. I get less expensive prescription drugs than I otherwise would. When I have to go to the doctor, I get most of the money back. There are police, fire brigade, ambulance services and a hundred other things that make it possible for me to earn that money I pay tax on, and make it possible for me to enjoy the benefits of the rest of it.

I also gain the security of knowing there are a couple of safety nets available if everything were to go pear-shaped. The fact that other people are getting the benefit of those safety nets right now is not a source of envy - if you're badly enough off that you need them, there's really not much to be envious of.

Here's something to keep in mind: if they'll lie to you about that, what else can't you trust them on?

Carnival Of the Elitist Bastards IX: Keepin' yer wits about ye

Pirates be needin' to keep their wits and cutlasses honed. So here be a little tale to ponder.


We pirates be splittin' some booty - government bailout booty! We been busy doin' executin', so we be decidin' some executive bonuses are in order - an' we be takin' aboard a thousand bars o' gold!

We pirates be likin' three things. Mostly, we be likin' to live. Secondly, we be likin' gold. Thirdly, we be likin' to see a good keelhaulin' or three over a tot of rum, as long as we be the one gettin' the rum and not the keelhaulin'.

The senior pirate among us be proposin' a division of the treasure. Bein' democratic pirates, we all vote on agreein' to this division, but not likin' ties, the senior pirate also be havin' the castin' vote. If the proposal be voted down, the senior pirate be keelhauled an' fed to the sharks, an' the next most senior pirate be proposin' to divide the loot.

In order of seniority, we be the captain, the first mate, the bosun, the bosun's mate and the scurvy crewman. So how be we dividin' the booty?


Arr. While ye ponder that, sharpen yer wits by readin' this month's Carnival of the Elitist Bastards!

Splendidelles takes on a lubber who is apparently a stranger to robust dissent and administers a telling riposte... largely by letting the lubber's screeches speak for themselves.

Annie has moved blogs to 'a refrigerator box at The Virtuous Skeptic'. Annoyed at being treated as 'an invisible, inconsequential mindless paramecium,' in Nurse Is Not A Dirty Word, Annie points out that the contributions of nursing research to developments in patient care are being ignored.

PalMD at White Coat Underground asks what the inauguration of a new President will do for medicine. Beginning with the "ethical apocalypse", he tours the sorry legacy of the previous administration. (Apologies to PalMD - the original direct link to the article had a glitch in it - now repaired)

Z, over at It's the Thought that Counts calls on politicians to quit raising ignorance over expertise. In "Academia versus politics?", Z argues that politicians should be leading public opinion toward what needs to be done, not watering Steven Chu's expertise on energy policy down for tenuous political advantage.







Blake Stacey at Science After Sunclipse takes on the issue of the New Scientist with the "Darwin was wrong" cover (a popular target, for obvious reasons). However, never one to just run with the herd, Blake takes aim at the gross oversimplifications of the editorial, where Lord Kelvin's famous quote is taken out of context and put to bad ends. Blake argues that Elitist Bastards are people who care to get things right, revealing a much more interesting tale than the usual story of a grumpy and out of touch physicist. Blake says that his post is 'somewhat complementary to this post by my blogo-friend GG' - and indeed, it also takes on the tendency 'to streamline and oversimplify science history to the point where it presents a genuinely misleading impression of not only how things happened, but how science is done'.








George at Decrepit Old Fool takes on faith-based gambling (in its myriad guises) in his post Betting against the house. He points out that placing faith above data and knowledge is what built Las Vegas - and also landed us in some serious messes.



Meanwhile, over at Thoughts in a Haystack, John Pieret delivers a broadside in New Year, Old Crap, where he takes on a lubber who links eugenics and the Holocaust to ... you guessed it! ... "Darwinism." Pieret (now there's a piratey-sounding moniker) shows him the plank.







Stephanie at Almost Diamonds writes about the joy of making the world a little better by helping turn someone's rough diamond into a gem. We loves gems.

PodBlack Cat tackles the impact of superstition in traditional beliefs and looks at some amusing titles in 'Year Of The Ox - Charming Tradition Or Load Of Bull?'. (Catgirl pirates! Arr!)

Dana over at En Tequila Es Verdad reckons that getting people to read more science books seems like an Elitist Bastard-worthy goal. After seeing the nonsense produced by the scurvy knaves that some of our game crewmates have tackled, I can only say "Aye!"

Arr, and there be the skeptical scribblins o' some other sea dog, who wants ye to keep a weather-eye out. Better take a look, to be sure.







So, what should the captain propose to his crew?

I not be spoilin' a pretty puzzle so quickly, by just showin' ye where to dig. But if ye be yet curious and at the same time, too full o' rum to be figurin', the rattlin' finger bone of old Pete will point the way to dividin' a paltry hundred gold pieces. Ye'll have to figure it out from there.

Or in lego-comic-form, here. (Yes, that's where all the images come from.)

Captaining the Titanic

Bad arithmetic can leave us like the captain of the Titanic - convinced we're unsinkable while we confidently steam toward the iceberg.

The inability of the Clinton advisors to perform basic number crunching cost them dearly in their primary campaign.

After the expensive loss in Iowa the Clinton campaign focused on states with a primary, such as Texas, pouring an enormous amount of resources into winning them while Obama racked up win after win in states they weren't even running polling in... only to discover that the time, money and effort had gained them little advantage in several of the contests that they focused on. Clinton won the Texas primary, but it didn't translate into a big advantage in delegates. A little number-crunching (which plenty of people pointed out well before the Texas contest took place) would have shown that a big effort in Texas would have conferred a relatively minor advantage, given the way that Texas' system works. But their campaign apparently didn't understand the issue - in spite of the fact that the issue was well understood by others - until too late; the Clinton camp started whining about it a few days before the primary, but it is not like Texas' circumstances were a secret before then.

Clintons' campaign paid "millions of dollars to consultants who offered up dubious advice".

These "experts" then managed to make further, even simpler elementary mathematical mistakes (by applying a calculation suitable for districts with 6 delegates to districts with different numbers of delegates), which meant that time after time, Clinton must have been mispending money, by allocating resources where they would be certain to be wasted and failing to allocate them where they could make a real difference, in effect multiplying Obama's financial advantage many-fold.

[Mathematics was not the only problem in the Clinton campaign, by any means - but it was a very important one that should never have arisen at all.]

What is it that causes monumental errors on the scale of using a calculation based on six delegates - that the target should be 7/12 of the vote ("the magic number is 59%") - for other districts?

Might it be the Dunning-Kruger effect? Is it just arrogance? Is it getting so focused on things like spin and sound-bites that you can't even remember the rules of the game?

Perhaps the Dunning-Kruger effect might also explain why the California Supreme Court have ruled that courts, not statisticians, will decide which calculations are to be used in cases involving so-called "cold-hit" DNA-matches. Statistical experts are to be reduced to "calculators", performing court approved calculations, whether the circumstances merit the calculations or not.

Innumeracy is what lets a political leader spend a trillion dollars on a largely futile and deadly war, and at the same time veto spending a million dollars on an essential education program, with a stunningly small backlash, partly because many voters don't realize the first is a million times as large as the second. Trillion, billion and million all just become different ways of saying "gazillion", and even the most implausible justifcation can be made to sound iron-clad.

A citizen needs enough mathematics to understand such differences in scale, and a political advisor certainly needs at least enough to be able to formulate a sensible strategy. Without it, we're all in for some very painful and expensive lessons.

A misplaced sense of self-importance (II - you ain't so special)

(Part I is here.)

If deflating misplaced self-importance in hypocrites is a good thing, we should be prepared to deflate our own as well.

Fortunately this is easy. The universe is happy to disabuse us of any sense of importance, if we're prepared to listen to it. Here's a few examples from the last few days:

Other apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can – by using self-control and imagining future events.

At the same time, our human sense of empathy is nothing special either. Chimps calm each other after an attack with hugs and kisses, in the same way that humans do.

Our memory of what happens to us is not as good as we think

And we may (just possibly) be in for a biggie - since there's ice on Mars, the chances improve substantially that one day we'll find evidence of life there in the past. There will be good reason to think that the universe is filled with life. We would know, then, that life just tends to pop up whenever the conditions are suitable.

Which I find is kind of a cosy feeling.

A misplaced sense of self-importance (I: "elitism"-ism)

A month ago, I made the point that accusations of elitism tend to come from people who are in fact from an elite group themselves.

Whether it's to deflect attention from their own situation, or an attempt to "get in" with a group to which they do not belong, or simply an attempt to shut up a message they don't like, or for some other reason, it's a common occurence.

This was recently brought home by the ironic situation of David Brooks of the New York Times claiming "Obama had a problem" because he wouldn't be comfortable with the people at an Applebee's. Except Brooks fucked up, showing he's completely ignorant of what can be found at an Applebee's himself.

This is not an occasional happenstance - the "charge" of elitism always seems to come from a member of some elite. It's hypocrisy writ large - writ large because the stakes are usually big.

They're making another person or group scapegoats for a "crime" that they themselves are guilty of, in order to incite support among a group of people to which they simply do not belong.

[And really, it's not such a surprise that this is almost always the case. An ordinary Joe doesn't use a word like elite. It's insufficiently exoteric (as are words like "insufficiently" and "exoteric" - the irony isn't lost on me, but at least I've linked to a definition - I may be an elitist bastard, but anyone's welcome to join me!)]

I'm almost tempted to call this a law:
(1) If a person calls another an elitist, they are almost guaranteed to be a member of a social, economic or political elite themselves.

If that law is true, it carries with it something like Godwin's law as a corollary -

(2) the first person to level a charge of "elitism" is a loser

The appropriate response is to simply indicate that we know the speaker is hypocrite - a loser of the worst kind. Let them know you're onto them. You know you want to.

I think this hypocrisy comes from a misplaced sense of self-importance - that the rules they play by don't apply to them. Helping deflate that sense of self-importance is a public service.



(Image from Demotivate Us)

(Part II is here.)

Celebrating the intellect

The underlying message of the Intelligent Design movement, and most especially Expelled is "Scientists are too dumb to understand science". It is an attack on science, masquerading as an attack on elitism (and various other attacks). It is an eerie echo of the usual attack on experts by sociopolitical elites: "Don't listed to smart people. They don't understand you."

In every case, they're asking you to stop thinking.


Viva eggheads!

We need smart people. We need experts. We need people who are prepared to devote years of their lives to studying a subject. These days, human knowledge is vast, and increasingly complex.

And why is it that it takes a lot of work to become an expert these days? Why is our knowledge vast and growing? Because we build on the work of other experts. In the 1930s, vast numbers of people - many of them children - died or were crippled by polio.

Where are they now? Why don't we have thousands of crippled children? Science. Experts. Eggheads.

Smallpox used to kill thousands every year and disfigure thousands more. Where are all the new victims of smallpox?

In the early decades of last century, and all the years that preceeded it, simple infections killed millions. If it weren't for antibiotics, I'd be dead, bedridden or at best so sickly as to be barely able to work. So would many of my friends and family. If it weren't for other forms of medical treatment, almost everyone I know would be dead, or at best, suffering. One of my heroes is in the Carnival banner over on the right.

We fight an ongoing war with bacteria, which (via evolution) gradually become able to deal with antibiotics. Experts - scientists - work to keep a step ahead, saving countless lives.

Without spectacles, I'd be so blind as to be useless for most tasks (these days, I could even choose to have laser surgery).

We need to celebrate intellectualism - we need some tiny bastion against the permanent Carnival of the Stupid that those who would seek to impose their will on ours would like us to have.


What would be the ultimate consequences of this growth industry of anti-intellectualism, this mantra of whatever you want to be true is true?

Stuff like teachers who know the toothpick trick getting fired for practising wizardy. Gee, I hope something that stupid never happens.


The deadly danger of anti-knowledge rhetoric

Currently the position being held when people are decrying "elites" is in reality, anti-expert rhetoric. It's not even listening to the opinions of people who have devoted their working lives to the study of a particular subject.

Now, I'm not suggesting that they will have all the answers. But experts are experts because they know their area. It would pay to understand why they're saying what they're saying. I am not suggesting that their opinions can never be assailed. Not so; if you learn what they know, then you can take them on in their arena. Who knows, maybe you'll even come up with a good idea. But more likely, everything you think of will have already been thought of and either debunked or already tried. The experts will be able to tell you who has tried it, when and how it turned out, or they will know who debunked it, how they debunked it, and what you'll have to overcome to get it to work.

To just dismiss almost universal opinions of the knowledgeable as "elitist" is a ridiculous ploy. It's appealing to the lowest common denominator - "you're just as good as they are" is the implication. Well, that's true - human lives are all valuable. But the additional implication - "a completely ignorant opinion is just as good as any experts" is ludicrous. The hidden claim is that "smart people are stupid". Well, that is stupid.

The subtext of the dismissal of expert opinion as elitist is "believe what you want - it's just as true as reality". That's not only ludicrous, it's dangerous.

What does it get us?

• Global Warming denialists
  
• Overfishing of crucial marine resources
  
• Creationism in classrooms
  
• The hell-hole that Iraq has been turned into
  
• The post-Katrina mess
  
• Anti-vaxers playing footsie with polio... and risking everyone else's health
  
• Flagrantly stupid energy policies that will lead to much worse problems down the track, like higher energy prices as the fuel runs out even faster, and no reserves to deal with temporary shortages.
  

To exploit this kind of anti-expert rhetoric for cheap (and temporary) advantage... that deserves our most vehement contempt. Politicians - at least ones worthy of our vote - should be leading by example, be encouraging us to be smart, be discussing difficult issues and trusting us to realize that they're not going to be solved by platitudes and ignorant policies. They should not be exploiting ignorance, and we should not be rewarding them for treating us like morons. They should be denounced, loudly. If the media won't do it, then we must.

Beware the wealthy and influential masquerading as populists. They're liars, and their favourite lie is to slander someone smart and hardworking with the label "elite". Don't trust them, because they think you're stupid and can be exploited if they just push a few buttons.

Possible banner for the Carnival of Elitist Bastards

Since I have an anti-"anti-elitism" post set for the Carnival of Elitist Bastards (and this too), I thought I'd have a go at a banner. I stole one of the banners here and modified it. Because, you know, a bastard elitist egghead like me won't admit that there's something he couldn't do if he wanted.

So, anyway, it's a bit rough, but here we go:



(Edit: I just noticed a minor issue, which I am not going to fix. So there.)