Obsidian Wings

Weekend Open Thread

by wj

We are overdue for a new open thread. Unfortunately, inspiration is failing me this morning, so I’m going to fall back on something which is probably irrelevant to almost everyone else here: the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

For those of you who are not aware, the DMV can be described (if ones is very, very generous) as a mess. If one is merely very generous, “disaster” would be the term of choice. Listing the faults of the current DMV could take months. But a recent audit gives a taste. https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/03/29/editorial-dmv-audit-provides-shocking-examples-of-dysfunction/

One item, in particular, struck me. The DMV’s software was characterized as “using a 50 year old programming language.” My first thought was that they were probably talking about CoBOL; and why was that a major problem? But no.

Assembler, the primary programming language used in DMV field office computer applications, was created around the 1950s and is less commonly used today. With a significant portion of the agency’s IT workers approaching retirement age, DMV faces a potential shortfall of workers with skills to program its computers.

Oh, (mainframe, no doubt) Assembler. NOW, I see why there might be a problem. In fact, my biggest surprise is that they still have any Assembler programmers who haven’t retired. I have to wonder, how long is it going to take to rewrite all those programs in a better language? For that matter, how long will it take just to document what the existing programs actually do – because I’m betting that the current “documentation”, where it exists at all, is massively inadequate.

Anyway, Open Thread

Say their names

by liberal japonicus

After the 17 0ct 2017 Las Vegas shooting, prompted by JanieM, I dropped in the comments to post the names of the victims and a link saying something about them. That finished up about a month later with this post collecting those names and links. I had briefly entertained the idea of continuing to do that with other mass shootings, but upon consideration, I thought that 1) the Las Vegas shooting was different because the people were only connected by happening to be at a concert together 2) I would have probably been at the keyboard 24/7.

But the impulse to remember the victims has always been there and was recently reiterated by New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern and the Guardian has followed up on that with this article.

When I made the summary post, I added the poem Grief by Stephen Dobyns. Another one from him.

Prague — by Stephen Dobyns

The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?

Maybe a hundred years, which would
give us nearly forty more to visit Oslo
and take the train to Vladivostok,
learn German to read Thomas Mann

in the original. Even more baseball games,
more days at the beach and the baking
of more walnut cakes for family birthdays.
How much time is enough time? How much

is needed for all those unspent kisses,
those slow walks along cobbled streets?

“Prague” by Stephen Dobyns, The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech.
Copyright © 2016

Digital Tax Avoidance Among the Masses

by Ugh

Warning: some free form thoughts on online social media platforms, tax policy and tax avoidance. 

Individual countries around the world have begun enacting specialized tax regimes targeted at "digital" businesses.  These include things like digital services taxes, digital advertising taxes, a tax on digital transactions, and various other taxes aimed at the usual suspects, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc.  

To generalize, the primary complaint among countries implementing these sorts of taxes is that these companies have a significant "presence" in their jurisdiction - either via sales and/or data sourcing (or both) - and yet pay little or no tax to those jurisdictions because such a presence doesn't rise to the traditional international standard for those countries to tax those companies' profits.*  Most in the international tax community consider these kinds of targeted taxes as "bad tax policy," which seems right to me. 

OTOH, these sort of taxes are aimed at these companies from an intuitive sense that the companies, or I will argue "someone," more broadly is getting away with something tax wise.  I think that's right but I think these countries, by aiming the taxes at such "digital" companies, are missing the target.  Instead, I would argue that the ones getting away with tax avoidance in the digital arena are the billions of users of these online platforms.  

Many of these platforms offer their service for "free."  But it's not really free.  Instead, in exchange for access to Facebook's platform, or gmail, or any of the other online services that you can use for no-charge, you are turning over some portion of your personal data.  So in fact your access to Facebook is a barter transaction, where Facebook gives you access to its online platform in exchange for your data.  In that way the average user acts as a "supplier" to Facebook, who then uses that input (the data) in its profit making business and pays taxes on its corporate profits.

But the real tax avoider in this situation are the Facebook (or gmail, etc.) users.  They have used an asset of theirs - data - in which they have zero basis and upon an exchange of which they should (in theory) owe tax based on the difference between the value of that data and that (zero) basis.  Instead, this transaction goes untaxed.  Moreover, these "free" (i.e., untaxed) online platforms have displaced a massive amount of economic activity that would have otherwise been subject to tax.  

Take "free" online email, for example.  Now you can communicate with friends, relatives, colleagues, strangers, businesses, etc. instantaneously and at only the cost of an internet connection (which also enables many other activities).  Formerly, you would have had to place a phone call, which could be taxed, or write a letter, which required a stamp, plus paper, envelopes, and a pen - all purchases which would have been subject to tax (and on which the producers of those products would pay tax on their profits).  Multiply this by any number of things one gets for "free" online. But those transactions have been replaced by this tax-free barter transaction of data in exchange for services.  

So my theory is that a large part of the big revenue drop for countries is due to their policy choice - conscious or unconscious - to refuse to tax users on the value of their use of online platforms.  Now, there may be good reasons for this, mostly practical, but I don't think one of them is that there is no exchange of value going on between users and these online platforms.  These sorts of things have tremendous value to users - ask yourself if you were told that your Facebook, gmail, Amazon, etc. account was going to be deleted tomorrow, how much you would pay to ensure it wasn't deleted?  

Anyway, some rambling from me since I'm just back from a conference on this exact subject and no one mentioned the possibility of taxing users.  Plus, I see stupid comments from Presidential candidates saying things like Facebook "use[s] us, and we’re their commodity, and we’re not getting anything out of it..."  Except, you know, access to Facebook!  An online platform that costs hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to build and maintain....

*Generally, a foreign company must have a "permanent establishment" in a jurisdiction for that jurisdiction to tax the profits of that company, and such establishment required an actual physical presence in the country (or the company must have an agent authorized to conclude contracts on its behalf operating in the country).  

what (R)'s want

by russell

They want all the cookies.

They want to cut taxes, especially on the wealthy.  And they want to either annihilate or privatize any and all outflows of public money to.... the public.

Deficits don't matter, said Reagan, according to Cheney.  But, actually they do matter.  They give (R)'s their pretext for taking stuff away.

From you.

Remember the dude who wanted "government out of his Medicare"?  He's gonna get his wish.

i wore an onion on my belt....

by russell

"it was the fashion at the time".

surely, seizing upon opportunities to point and laugh at the youngsters is among the foremost signs of incipient geezerhood.  nonetheless, I am willing to say that I found this hilarious.

now all of you fluffy-bearded, beanie-wearing, flannel-shirted lumberjack wanna-be's get offa my lawn!

open thread y'all.

collusion

by russell

The various controversies and plots and sub-plots and schemes and counter-schemes that seem to swarm around Donald Trump and his administration are, admittedly, hard to keep track of.  So much winning!

But there is a core issue that seems, to me, utterly unambiguous.  And, it's also the issue that Trump himself and his supporters seem most intent on refuting. And that is whether or not there was any collusion between Trump and/or principals of his campaign, and people representing the Russian government.

On June 9, 2016, Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with five other people, in Trump Tower.  The five others included people known to work with the Russian government.  One, Rinat Akmetshin, is a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer.  Another, Natalia Veselnitskaya, works as an attorney for Russian government agencies and principals.

The text of the invitation to the meeting, from the representative of the Russian parties to Donald Trump Jr., reads as follows:

Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.

My emphasis.  And, the ask from the Russians was relief on the Magnitsky Act, which among other things freezes assets held by Putin and his kleptocrat pals.

And, Trump Jr. et al took the meeting.  Eagerly.

Collusion is a very broad term.  Essentially, it refers to secret or deceitful co-operation between parties to gain or achieve something they should not be gaining or achieving.

The actions of Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort on June 9 2016 may or may not be illegal.  But how the hell are they not collusion?

Reparations

by wj

I’d been thinking about a post on the topic. Both the more usual (relatively speaking) position on concerning blacks for slavery, and Senator Warren’s recent comment regarding Native Americans. Then 538 came along and gave me a hook to hang it on: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-americans-think-about-reparations-and-other-race-related-questions/

The first, obvious, and generally ignored question is: who qualifies? I mean, pretty obviously President Obama, although black, doesn’t qualify. After all, none of his ancestors were slaves in the US. But is there a threshold for how much of your family tree includes slaves? Do we have a sliding payout scale, based on what fraction of your ancestors were slaves? (And if so, how do we deal with having some white ancestors who are in your family tree merely because some slave owner raped one of his slaves?)

Similarly for Native Americans: how much of your ancestry must be Native American for you to qualify? Do you have to somehow be registered by a specific tribe to qualify? Does it matter if your only basis for even knowing (because until then nobody knew) is a recent DNA test looking at your ancestry?

The second question is, are we talking about a symbolic gesture, i.e. an apology and token payment? Or something actually proportional to the level of harm done? I note that, when reparations were paid to Japanese Americans who were interned, the amount ($20,000) was a bit more than symbolism – even if inadequate to the actual harm done. And in that case, we were talking about the actual individuals who had been interned being readily identifiable, and their heirs likewise readily identified. For slavery, both time and poorer initial record keeping make that problematic.

Third, are we (in the case of blacks) only talking about slavery? Or are we talking about institutional discrimination (Jim Crow laws)? Or even less formal discrimination? (Hmmm... On that basis, perhaps President Obama does qualify....) And how do we decide who was actually impacted and how much?

To be clear, I’m not saying that all of those questions are unanswerable. Just that anyone arguing for “reparations” needs to be asked for answers to them. Otherwise we don’t have an actual policy proposal, just a feel good (or, if you oppose the idea, “feel bad”) slogan.

Some thoughts on anthem protesting

by liberal japonicus
Of course, right after Russell posts, I get an article that pushes me to post. Never fails.

Eight players from the Ole Miss men's basketball team knelt during the national anthem before Saturday's home game against Georgia in response to a Confederacy rally near the arena.

We've never had a discussion about the whole kneeling during the anthem thing, partly because sports isn't really a big thing here, in part because (I hope) the commentariat recognizes that it is a symbolic discussion that resists attempts at rational discussion. But the article above has me think of some of the functional reasons why this would start within football, and why it would happen at a basketball game at Ole Miss, as well as analyze some of my misconceptions. More after the break.

land, spreading out so far and wide...

by russell

This popped up on my FB feed, courtesy of a friend who is an architectural engineer.  It's a breakdown of how land is used in the lower 48.  I have no point to make about it, I just found it fascinating. 

Some interesting (to me, anyway) points:

• urban areas - 3.6% of land area, 80% of the people live there
• only about 20% of crop land is used to grow stuff that humans actually eat
• more than a third of corn production turns into ethanol
• one-third of the land area of the lower 48 is used for pasture

It appears that in some ways we are the United States of Cows.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and it has both statistics and graphics, so bonus!

Open thread.

(In)Security – Weekend Open Thread

by wj

These musings about the American approach to security are not actually motivated by this week’s activities around Trump’s fantasy wall and its supporters. Although there are some obvious implications. Rather, they stem from the trip I took last week to Brussels. Specifically, about my observations concerning airport security in Europe, as opposed to at US airports.

One obvious difference is at security check points. At US airports, chances are you will get to empty everything out of your pockets, take off your shoes, and go thru the nudiescope. In Europe, nobody thinks you need to take off your shoes, and the metal detectors are set relaxed enough that you don’t even need to take off your watch.

But the other big difference, and one which particularly struck me, was that every airport that I went thru had pairs of soldiers, with semiautomatic weapons (and in jungle camo for some reason), patrolling. In US airports, I have seen lots of military personnel in uniform – but only because they were traveling. Not a weapon, let alone any serious weapons, among them.

The difference, I suspect, is that Europeans are serious about security. Whereas Americans seem mostly interested in the appearance of security – “security theater” if you will. So European governments mainly do things which will increase actual security. Whereas the American government does things that will serve as constant reminders to the traveling public that they have “done something” – whether it actually serves any useful security function or not. One has to wonder why that is. (And no, I don't have an answer on that.)

Of course, the same focus on symbolism over actual usefulness is reflected in the Trumpists’ obsession over Trump’s wall. Even if the problems that Trump (falsely) alleges were real, the wall would be of minimal use in addressing them. But as a symbol, it is apparently quite potent. At least for some.

(Also an Open Thread. Because we are somewhat overdue for one.)