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rather than simple placeholder variables, we should employ placeholders for smoothly continuous functions over the relevant parameter space. for taxes, the para

rather than simple placeholder variables, we should employ placeholders for smoothly continuous functions over the relevant parameter space. for taxes, the parameter space might include revenue and profit, over which the tax is smoothly continuous. discontinuities just beg to be exploited.

specialist 5y ago
I eagerly await the broad recognition that economies are non-linear complex adaptive systems.
- clairity 5y ago
  exactly. social phenomena in general are many orders more complex than physical phenomena for which mathematical models are generally deployed effectively. but even so, a zero- (e.g., a single tax rate) or quasi-first-order (like a limited number of tax brackets) model makes no sense, when we can much better fit the desired effect with a slightly higher-order function for only a small complexity trade-off. better fit means reducing the exploitation surface. tangentially, this is a relevant application of basic linear algebra and calculus to civics, which could be used as concrete motivation in the high school education of those subjects.
usrusr 5y ago
Yeah, this is basically what got me to that idea of separating formula from parameter: whenever politics should care about some quality of a formula, it gets completely drowned in the noise of people screaming at each other trying to drag the parameters one way or the other. As evidenced by every single discussion about UBI. Sometimes the formula still turns out ok, but far too often not ok at all. It was in my second or third programming side job when I was asked by the ramshackle finance marketing upstarts I was working for if it was possible to implement the almighty Income Tax Table (in Access, obviously). I had heard scary things about that beast. A few minutes of googling (I think was already Google?) and I realized that the law in question defined a simple linear factor that increases at certain thresholds, with a tax-exmpt base per threshold to correct for any jumps. I was so disappointed! Not so much by a scary mad beast that turned out to be all tame and reasonable but by the professions of finance marketers and tax consultants who routinely acted as if it was some arbitrary monstrosity that could only be dealt with in a lookup table.
- clairity 5y ago
  yah, the lookup table is just discrete points of a stepwise function, so why not just use the underlying formula instead, and smooth it out while we're at it since it simplifies the calculation? in this era of handheld supercomputers, we're well beyond having to manually multiply out the formulas anyway. and tax forms are already basically one long formula where you just plug in the variable values in a step-by-step manner (and usually have a computer do the math for you).

specialist 5y ago

I eagerly await the broad recognition that economies are non-linear complex adaptive systems.

clairity 5y ago
exactly. social phenomena in general are many orders more complex than physical phenomena for which mathematical models are generally deployed effectively. but even so, a zero- (e.g., a single tax rate) or quasi-first-order (like a limited number of tax brackets) model makes no sense, when we can much better fit the desired effect with a slightly higher-order function for only a small complexity trade-off. better fit means reducing the exploitation surface. tangentially, this is a relevant application of basic linear algebra and calculus to civics, which could be used as concrete motivation in the high school education of those subjects.

usrusr 5y ago

Yeah, this is basically what got me to that idea of separating formula from parameter: whenever politics should care about some quality of a formula, it gets completely drowned in the noise of people screaming at each other trying to drag the parameters one way or the other. As evidenced by every single discussion about UBI. Sometimes the formula still turns out ok, but far too often not ok at all. It was in my second or third programming side job when I was asked by the ramshackle finance marketing upstarts I was working for if it was possible to implement the almighty Income Tax Table (in Access, obviously). I had heard scary things about that beast. A few minutes of googling (I think was already Google?) and I realized that the law in question defined a simple linear factor that increases at certain thresholds, with a tax-exmpt base per threshold to correct for any jumps. I was so disappointed! Not so much by a scary mad beast that turned out to be all tame and reasonable but by the professions of finance marketers and tax consultants who routinely acted as if it was some arbitrary monstrosity that could only be dealt with in a lookup table.

clairity 5y ago
yah, the lookup table is just discrete points of a stepwise function, so why not just use the underlying formula instead, and smooth it out while we're at it since it simplifies the calculation? in this era of handheld supercomputers, we're well beyond having to manually multiply out the formulas anyway. and tax forms are already basically one long formula where you just plug in the variable values in a step-by-step manner (and usually have a computer do the math for you).