Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

People in Massachusetts are trying to decide whether or not to tax people who earn over $1 million per year at a rate, for however much they are over $1 million, that is 4 percentage points higher than the rate paid by the common rabble. (article) Moving to a California-like system of progressive state income tax rates may require an amendment to the state constitution.

As a member of the common rabble, I of course support the idea of rich people paying my bills. As most other voters probably can’t see the days ahead when (a) politicians define down the “rich” threshold to capture revenue from people formerly not thought of as rich, and (b) $1 million is also the price of a Diet Coke, I think this idea of higher taxes on “the rich” has a good chance of adoption. (Also predicted by Russell Long‘s class poem:

Don’t tax you,
don’t tax me,
tax that fellow behind the tree!

; Long also predicted my personal support for the new tax: “A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.”)

Readers: What can we expect to change for the Massachusetts economy once this does go through?

(My predictions:

• further decline of the tech startup industry here relative to California; people who work in startups often have years of pretty low cash compensation and then one big year. If they’re going to pay California tax rates during that big year, why not just move to the center of the tech universe to begin with?
• slowdown of the real estate craze; there will be fewer people wanting to live in a $4 million house in Weston (but I think that Boston and Cambridge will continue to be in demand due to the meltdown of the U.S. transportation system and the lack of new walkable pleasant urban environments being built in the U.S.)
• heating up of the private jet business as more people decide that living in tax-free Florida for 183 days per year, but visiting New England frequently (rich people: watch out for “permanent alimony” in Florida compared to the theoretically limited term in Massachusetts!)
• increased values for Portsmouth, New Hampshire real estate (walkable pleasant town; water views everywhere); rich people: watch out for unlimited child support in New Hampshire, albeit not as lucrative as in Massachusetts
• earlier retirements for some successful folks; if you don’t need to keep working, a higher tax rate should provide encouragement to retire and move to a state with good weather and no estate tax (map). This could make Massachusetts a better place to be young and still climbing the ladder in, e.g., a big money management firm?

)

 

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Thirteen years ago (ouch!), I posted a thesis idea for someone studying computer science:

To a master’s student looking to do something with speech, I’d say “build a system that will occupy telephone solicitors.” The challenge for the computer is to keep the phone solicitor under the impression that he or she has reached a human being for as long as possible. The beauty of this system is that if installed in a wealthy area there would be a near-endless stream of calls on which to test the quality of the result and that, if a high quality system were widely installed on PCs nationwide, it would put the phone solicitors out of business (because they’d be spending so much time and money talking to computers programmed to keep them on the line indefinitely).

Companion: National multi-school contest for the best system.

It seems that the glorious day has come to pass! Gizmodo has published “Today’s Hero Made an AI That Annoys Telemarketers For As Long As Possible” about jollyrogertelephone.com. Not a bad effort, but a lot more could be done by someone researching speech recognition.

A pretty example for direct listening: on YouTube.

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A friend sends his children to the much-vaunted Lexington, Massachusetts public schools. He denies being a tiger parent but has a PhD, is Asian-American, and the kids seem to be doing a lot of extracurricular activities. Are the schools as great as Boston-area parents think? “Most of the teachers are bad; my daughter had a terrible math teacher last year,” he responded. “There are a few good ones, especially in the AP classes. Lexington probably has more good teachers  than other school systems.”

A few hours after this conversation I ran into a non-teacher employee of the Newton, Massachusetts public school system, another supposedly top choice. She said “Most schools with a great reputation are riding on something that they were doing 10 years earlier. That’s certainly true of Newton.”

What about Lexington school system insiders? I recently met a teacher in the school system who characterized the evaluation process for already-hired teachers as demanding and said that there was no job security for bad teachers. In his opinion it was easy (too easy!) for a teacher, even one with tenure, to be fired for poor performance. (See also this posting about teacher hiring and firing in a neighboring school system.)

Related:

• Smartest Kids in the World Review

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A sad sight in the Dillon, Colorado supermarket today:

(Readers who happen upon this some years from now: this photo was taken a day after the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50.)

 

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Old guys who play squash will appreciate “Holding the T,” a January 18, 2016 New Yorker article about a guy who decided to get super serious about the game starting at age 50.

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Chatting with a pilot in Orlando, Florida… he found a woman who had profited financially from a brief marriage and was continuing to profit by collecting child support for a young son over whom she had obtained primary custody. After a brief courtship, they were married. Seven years and about a day later (seven years is the minimum length marriage that may entitle a plaintiff to “permanent alimony” (Nolo Press)), he found himself in divorce litigation…

[Note that child support in Florida is potentially unlimited, but not nearly as lucrative as in many states in the Northeast. Where Florida shines, from a plaintiff’s point of view, is in the alimony potential.]

Question: Why do humans imagine that they are special and that the future won’t resemble the past?

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Forbes calculates that players in the Super Bowl will, on average, be worse off financially for having shown up to play (spending 7 days in California subjects them to state income tax on a portion of their 2016 earnings). Rather than force players to take a cut in spending power, why not always have the Super Bowl in tax-free Florida, Nevada, or Texas? It would be sold-out regardless of location, right?

Separately, if you want to fly on a mostly empty plane, buy a ticket during the Super Bowl. JetBlue BOS to DEN at 7:45 pm was not a popular choice for others!

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From a reader:

My 16 yr old daughter is about to start pilot lessons in Princeton, NJ. My primary concern is safety. We have the choice of of having her learn in a circa 2000 Cessna 172 or a 2008 DA-40 with a G1000.

I have read this post, suggesting that traditional instrumentation is better for teaching.

My response:

The DA40 is noisier so you’ll have to buy her a high-end noise-cancelling headset.

Everything is G1000 or similar these days. So if she wants to really fly she might as well start with a glass cockpit. It might take her an extra 5 hours due to the complex user interface but if you count the number of hours to being a competent IFR pilot in a real aircraft that you’d actually want to take IFR (like the DA40/G1000), the hours will be the same.

The DA-40 is also a lot more fun to fly.

I wouldn’t say that there will be a significant safety difference. It is more about the instructor and whether or not the instructor stresses checklist discipline, for example. But I guess if they were to crash the DA-40 was certified to much more stringent standards.

If you can get her to sit down with a G1000 simulator for 20 hours total through her Private training, and also read the Garmin PDFs thoroughly, the G1000 shouldn’t add to her required flight time.

Regarding the article you referenced promoting the 1950s six-pack for a primary student…

Students will naturally over-focus on the instruments when they should be looking outside. It is the CFI’s job to keep reminding them to look outside, that he/she will read the student what is on the gauges, and to cover up the instruments when appropriate so that the student has no choice but to look outside to keep the attitude constant.

Looking inside at a G1000 is unhelpful to getting a Private, but so is looking inside at a six-pack. If your daughter becomes a G1000 master by using a simulator, reading the Garmin PDFs carefully, practicing in a plane that is hooked up to external power and/or some other kind of sim, she won’t be any more distracted by the G1000 than she would be by the traditional six-pack.

The real answer is that for about 95% of what she has to learn to get a Private there is no difference. She should be looking outside and should find an instructor who can keep her attention outside.

Readers: Thoughts on what, at least ten years ago, was a live debate?

 

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Snow brought down some of the trees that the Millionaires for Obama in our Lincoln, Massachusetts neighborhood like to hug. The trees took the power lines with them and about half of our friends/neighbors were without power for more than 24 hours. I posted on Facebook that “If we were a high-income mostly-white community the government and the local electricity monopoly (Eversource) would have responded vigorously. ‪#‎suburbanlivesmatter‬”

I searched on Twitter and it turns out that this hashtag is seldom used. Is it time to start a movement?

[Separately, the Russians in our household expressed disbelief that eight inches of snow could take out power for 116,000 homes in Massachusetts. “All of the power lines are underground in Russia,” they noted, “and losing power like this is unheard of.” I reminded them that everything is better in the U.S. A visiting friend from Holland remarked “This would never happen in Holland; powerlines are mostly underground and the above-ground ones are well-maintained.”]

Resolution: We got our power back after about 38.5 hours.

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Follow-up to “Equal Rights Amendment, Bristol Palin, and Aziz Ansari”…

I checked in with some friends last month. The husband’s sister lives in Florida. About 20 years ago she married a man who seemed like a partner with some financial potential. However, he had gradually lost his mojo and hadn’t been earning any money for the past few years. She decided to discard him under Florida’s no-fault divorce law. His defense of the lawsuit, however, included a demand to have a 50/50 shared parenting arrangement of their children, thus entitling him to a stream of tax-free child support payments from her (since his own income is zero). He is also seeking the “permanent alimony” that Florida courts conventionally hand out.

The case hasn’t been resolved yet, but her lawyer tells her that there is a realistic possibility that she will be supporting this unwanted man for the next 50 years and/or until her death. Another example of how anything resembling the Equal Rights Amendment might be bad for women in practice?

On a related note, let’s consider an author popular with American women. “Marie Kondo and the Cult of Tidying Up” (WSJ, February 26, 2015):

At the author’s direction, the girl must pull them all out, pick up each item and pose Ms. Kondo’s signature question: Does it tokimeku—does it spark joy? …

“Keep only the things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest,” [Marie Kondo] advises. “When you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t.”

One of her clients, she notes, even jettisoned her husband.

“Jettison then write checks every month for 50 years” might not tokimeku …

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