Sorry for the lack of posts. There are some developments that have been happening purposely off the radar that will launch soon, revitalizing this blog and launching it into new echelons of content, utility, and glory.
Here’s an interesting observation. In the last 8 days, 90% of my consumption has occurred in either a resort, airport, movie theater, or sports stadium. After spending some time in these places, it has really affected my ability to judge what is a decent price. For example, at the resorts where I was staying, a Fiji water costs between 50 and 70 pesos ($5 to $7). At either the movies or stadium, water (not Fiji brand) was a bargain at $3.75. Airports are similar (for the record, I have been in 5 different airports in the last 8 days) Last night, near a hotel in downtown Chicago, I ran into a 7-Eleven to get some water, and, lo and behold, Fiji water priced at the low price of $2.83. I had never had a Fiji water before last night, but after seeing such a bargain, how could I refuse?
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Arnold Kling at EconLog has a great post regarding taxing consumption, rather than income. Mike Moffat over at economics.about.com, adds a great insight.
To summarize, currently, the idea of “income tax” is that those who make more, should be taxed more. That seems fair, based on some notion of fairness. Kling makes the point that “When you earn income, you can either spend it on consumption, save it, or give it to charity. The latter two should not generate taxes.” This is a very valid point. Saving is good for the economy, and the US could certainly use higher levels of savings. And charity is good from an altruistic standpoint. A tax is a negative incentive, and there should never be a negative incentive on a positive behavior.
Moffat adds that the type of taxes we should pay on consumption are ones that compensate for the social cost, allowing consumers to pay the true cost of their consumption. True cost = nominal cost + social cost, where nominal cost is the “sticker price” and social cost is the cost of the effects of consumption. This would be a good way to implement a tax policy. If the true cost of consumption is inflicted upon consumers in the form of taxes, and those taxes go towards the improvement of the relevant issue (pollution, congestion, etc), then the market will naturally reach some equilibrium at some optimal level. Since the social costs have been factored in price, this will be the socially optimal level of consumption. That would be great.
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Matlab – a mathematician’s quantitative best friend. I just got matlab up and running on my Ubuntu’d laptop. There were some issues with JRE. I emailed Mathworks for support. They did a great job in addressing my problem and persisting until a solution was found. Kudos to Brian Worthington @ Mathworks for the great set of emails troubleshooting my problem. I highly respect a company that offers this level of support, especially on a $100 student version of the product.
As was the case with IBM, Mathworks has made me a loyal customer due to their tech support.
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