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Testicles

At this time, it may pay to remember that Greece, for all its present troubles, was the birthplace of some of the greatest figures in history. We remember Themistocles who fought at Marathon, successfully foresaw the need to create a massive navy and defeated the greatest military power on Earth at Salamis, and experienced a tragic defeat politically that left him exiled and in service to the very power he had defeated. We remember Alcibiades for his brilliance and unorthodox tactics, as well as his lack of loyalty to any one power.

But history has neglected one famous figure who has much to teach us about Greece’s, and the world’s, present crisis.

I speak, of course, of Testicles.

The story of Testicles can be summed up as follows:

As a young man, Testicles was a harmless, innocent member of society, overly sensitive and not particularly useful, as seen by his peers. Scorned, ridiculed, and misunderstood, Testicles would flee from the cold world into a warm, inner world fueled by growing hatred. One day, Testicles descended into the Underworld, seeking fame and glory to rid him of the taint of worthlessness ascribed to him by his fellow villagers.

No one knows quite what happened next. Some said the Gods took pity on him and endowed him with greater vigor and aggressiveness, to correct for his previous timidity. Others say he slew and drank the blood of Cerberus, taking on the fiend’s strength and power, at the cost of furriness. Whatever the case, the world would be forever changed by Testicles’ descent.

For after this time, Testicles was no longer content to engage in the day-to-day chores and menial labor that characterized his previous experience. Returning, stronger, larger, and more aggressive to his home village, he shunned the acts of farming and fishing to seize power from the wise council of elders that had led through years of peace and modest prosperity. And, once seizing control of the body politic, Testicles was not content to stop at his home village. He sought new conquest, and new glory, abroad.

There was initial shock of seeing the outcast in a position of command and dominance. Yet the people forgive and forget, especially as victory followed victory and the village grew to the center of a kingdom, with Testicles in charge. Testicles’ people grew rich, and forgot the wisdom of the elders, and celebrated their new lives as conquerors in conflict and commerce.

All the lands around the village now followed Testicles. Yet Testicles, never one for genuflection or to solicit outside advice, sought more. Attempts to moderate Testicles' impulses fell short; having spent most of his life in the shadows, Testicles refused to be handled by anyone.

Year after year, his empire grew. And with every conquest, Testicles felt he could do no wrong, and that he was destined to be a God. People worshiped Testicles, and he celebrated that the taint of failure that characterized his early life receded further and further behind.

But, as tyrants often do, he ultimately overreached.

After conquering a vast empire, he now sought to conquer the Undeworld itself. By overthrowing Hades, the God of Death, he believed he would become immortal and a God himself.

Testicles raised a massive army. The people, blinded by their loyalty to their Testicles, followed him into the underworld. Again, no one knows precisely what happened. But legend says that, in pitched battle, Hades himself smote Testicles, and kicked him into the fiery pits of Tartarus, where fire consumed Testicles, and the smell of burning fur and flesh terrified the army into fleeing.

In the aftermath, the empire disintegrated, and humbled, the Council of Elders was reconstituted. To this day, Greek schoolchildren in the small village remember the defeat by kicking Testicles in effigy over and over, and finally burning the effigy of Testicles, complete with fur and animal flesh, so that their children remember, viscerally, the horror of the defeat. As the Elders say, it is a painful, but necessary, reminder of the dangers of hubris, and the importance of being content with modest blessings.

Hopefully, we, too, can learn the lesson from this tale of what happens when we let Testicles guide our destiny.

Admittedly armchair economics - taxes and jobs

Tax policy should always be on the table. I'm tired of listening to people who admittedly have the job of fighting tax increases. I'll do my job, and dig past the repeated boilerplate about taxes killing investment and hiring.

American business have practically zero interest rates and historically low tax rates. And yet businesses are (perhaps rationally) not hiring. No wonder - the customer that represents 25% of the economy said it is tightening their belt, and probably going to fire a bunch of employees and close many positions held by current retirees. (That's the government - local, state, and federal.)

Let's step aside from the somewhat artificial government/private sector separation. Lewis Black put it best here (starting around 0:41): whether it's government, or the private sector, there are people who do the job, and there are rules that are either followed or broken.

So let's ditch whether a job is public sector or private sector for a second. Fiscal tightening is probably going to be bad for employment in the near to mid-term, whatever its impact longer term on the economic health of the country.

I'm wondering if it's possible to construct a tax that incentivizes hiring and capital investment now, rather than later. I'm going to avoid changing taxes on earned income, and explore policies to move money that is sitting in cash/short-term bonds.

Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a major company in America, continuing to make significant profits and sitting on a pretty hefty cash reserve. Policy is enacted such that my effective cost to hire and buy equipment will increase next year and stay higher. This gives me an incentive to do as much purchasing and hiring this year as seems reasonably prudent. Maybe there's equipment that I need. Maybe I need to hire to replace retiring employees.

How would this be done? There are carrots, and there are sticks.

Carrots are gifts above and beyond what is currently given. It might be a direct tax break for hiring or captial spending. It might be targeted subsidies for industries that can scale up quickly (construction, as opposed to, say, advanced research).

Sticks would involve taking away existing breaks, or imposing completely new taxes. It could involve ending the current tax credit for hiring new employees. It could be an increase in Medicare contributions to apply to new hires after a certain date, or an increase in sales tax. It could be a change in depreciation rules for capital purchases. It could be a change in environmental or labor regulations that will exempt those hired before a certain date.

Naturally, it wouldn't make sense to make the trigger date too soon. For example, if the sticks came with hiring in one week, there wouldn't be time to really increase hiring and purchasing before the cost of hiring/purchasing increased, which could, indeed, hinder recovery. But it wouldn't make sense to make it so far into the future that the change was discounted - actuarily as well as psychologically - to the point that it didn not change behavior. One to three years seems reasonable; perhaps over a longer period and involving increases over a period of time.

Carrots require more government spending and breaks, and probably more deficits. It's a bit odd that the party most concerned with government spending wants more work on one side of the ledger, and in a way that could potentially increase deficits.

I'm not exploring the moral fairness angle, or the effectiveness long-term of such policies. I'm also not exploring the political tractability of such a proposal (though it might be better than it seems at first glance, if one chooses to fight for it). I'm just wondering how it could be done.

Too often the focus is on changes on taxes on earned or unearned income. But if the goal is to change the behavior of companies that have cash on hand, then the tools used have to operate on that cash, and not only on the promise or reality of future profits.

Would love some informed, well-reasoned thoughts on this.

Why you should hug a math major today (and maybe even scientists and engineers)

I've been working on Slader, a website where you answer math questions and get paid a bit per solution. There's more comprehensive information in a review here, if you're interested.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the math majors/grad students I know are absolutely, totally nuts.

Look, I like LaTeX. It makes things pretty, especially equations. I've had to use quite a bit of it to write papers which, though scientifically moribund, were at least formatted (roughly) according to ApJ standards.

But you math people are totally ridiculous.

I remember one of my suitemates (let's call him "Jeff", because that's actually his name) had to write homework solutions in LaTeX. This was for an upper-division math class taught by a very assertive (though quite nice) Chinese professor. (Direct quote from the professor in my multivariable math class explaining derivatives: "e^x is like a strong child; you hit it and it stays the same. ln x is like a weak child; it dies and gets buried underground.)

So I'm sure he, and the other math majors I know, had to do LaTeX all the time.

Anyway, I just solved a part of a calculus problem. It involves determining where a function is concave up. It's part 1 of five. After completing it, I realized that it was totally not worth 75 cents.

Here's what the solution looks like:

Now wait a minute, you might say. That looks not bad. Well, it's actually quite bad, as in I did a crappy job. It's sparse on the explanations. I should add in subsections indicating that you need to test for the cases when x>0 and x<0. But I got tired. And here's why. Here's the LaTeX source code that I used to actually write the solution.

Now this isn't bad if you're a computer scientist, or a mathematician, or an engineer. But I taught high school for the last year. I have no fucking clue how people handle coding all day. Maybe it's like French; I don't know how the hell it works, but I guess if you do it long enough, it makes sense to you, even if it makes you seem mechanical (programming) or pretentious (French).

Anyway, I have a whole new sympathy for math people who do this every goddamn day, for many hours of said goddamn day. So go hug one. Maybe it will help with the carpal tunnel and eyestrain.

Random calculations for my physics class: estimate of the force from a Saturn V rocket