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Many people don't have a clue what "30-fold" even means, and therefore it sounds big and scary. Basically, it's just one of the tools in the sensationalist head

Many people don't have a clue what "30-fold" even means, and therefore it sounds big and scary. Basically, it's just one of the tools in the sensationalist headlines toolbox.

afavour 5y ago
…is that true? I understand “30-fold” to mean “30x” and I’m pretty sure I have from a very young age. I haven’t checked but I’d be surprised if my peers weren’t the same.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  I think people understand 30-fold to mean 30x, but don't always intuit that "slashed by 30-fold" is equivalent to a reduction by 97% of the original deal. They especially don't understand that the difference between a 20-fold, 30-fold, and 50-fold reduction is the same as a 95%, 97%, and 98% discount. This is especially evident in the mental gymnastics required to understand retail sales pricing. How good is a "Buy two, get one 50% off!!" deal? Brains easily give up on the hard questions and substitute easy answers. "What's it actually worth? Bought one at another store last month, do difficult pricing history memory, or easy answer, the original price is listed right there. How good is the deal? Complicated math, or easy answer, it's at least a good enough deal to merit a big sign, bright colors, and two exclamation points. And it's good for a limited time only? Better not miss out, buy now!" Here, the scope of the reduction is kind of irrelevant. They basically scrapped the old deal and tried to write a new, smaller one. Had they scrapped the megafactory plans and decided to open a fast food franchise it could have been reduced a million fold! The new agreement offers $80M and asks Foxconn to spend only $672M on a factory that will employ only 1,454 people by 2025. The original deal offered Foxconn $2.85B (or $2850M) to spend $10B ($10000M) and hire 13,000 by 2032. Big numbers are hard, but running the math it's now $55k/job and $0.13/dollar of capital investment, it was $220k/job and $0.285/dollar. $80M is 2.8% or a 30-fold reduction from $2.85B, but the full story is they've simultaneously reduced the ratios of the incentives and the scope of the required investment. A complete understanding of what those numbers mean is really hard to develop, and isn't really distilled by a substitution in the headline of 30-fold to 30x. Human brains in general are busy and don't like to work too hard, and whether we use "30 fold" like "four score" in our daily vernacular or they say 97% and 80, the headline's effect is the same. It conveys to readers who don't want to run all the numbers about average salaries and payroll taxes and capital depreciation and so on that the previous administration tried to offer an excessively generous deal but the current government has rolled that back to something a lot smaller, don't worry about exactly how much but just trust that it's a lot.

Many people don't have a clue what "30-fold" even means, and therefore it sounds big and scary. Basically, it's just one of the tools in the sensationalist headlines toolbox.

afavour 5y ago

…is that true? I understand “30-fold” to mean “30x” and I’m pretty sure I have from a very young age. I haven’t checked but I’d be surprised if my peers weren’t the same.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
I think people understand 30-fold to mean 30x, but don't always intuit that "slashed by 30-fold" is equivalent to a reduction by 97% of the original deal. They especially don't understand that the difference between a 20-fold, 30-fold, and 50-fold reduction is the same as a 95%, 97%, and 98% discount. This is especially evident in the mental gymnastics required to understand retail sales pricing. How good is a "Buy two, get one 50% off!!" deal? Brains easily give up on the hard questions and substitute easy answers. "What's it actually worth? Bought one at another store last month, do difficult pricing history memory, or easy answer, the original price is listed right there. How good is the deal? Complicated math, or easy answer, it's at least a good enough deal to merit a big sign, bright colors, and two exclamation points. And it's good for a limited time only? Better not miss out, buy now!" Here, the scope of the reduction is kind of irrelevant. They basically scrapped the old deal and tried to write a new, smaller one. Had they scrapped the megafactory plans and decided to open a fast food franchise it could have been reduced a million fold! The new agreement offers $80M and asks Foxconn to spend only $672M on a factory that will employ only 1,454 people by 2025. The original deal offered Foxconn $2.85B (or $2850M) to spend $10B ($10000M) and hire 13,000 by 2032. Big numbers are hard, but running the math it's now $55k/job and $0.13/dollar of capital investment, it was $220k/job and $0.285/dollar. $80M is 2.8% or a 30-fold reduction from $2.85B, but the full story is they've simultaneously reduced the ratios of the incentives and the scope of the required investment. A complete understanding of what those numbers mean is really hard to develop, and isn't really distilled by a substitution in the headline of 30-fold to 30x. Human brains in general are busy and don't like to work too hard, and whether we use "30 fold" like "four score" in our daily vernacular or they say 97% and 80, the headline's effect is the same. It conveys to readers who don't want to run all the numbers about average salaries and payroll taxes and capital depreciation and so on that the previous administration tried to offer an excessively generous deal but the current government has rolled that back to something a lot smaller, don't worry about exactly how much but just trust that it's a lot.