chouyu_31

Update: a friend has pointed out an error in my math, read the comments for better math. The spreadsheet has been updated. Also, the US is still behind.

Recently, I've heard some very poor arguments about why birth and death rate statistics make the whole "life expectancy" number not comparable from country to country. This is, obviously, an attempt to claim that the current US health care system is at least as good, if not better than, those countries that do better in life expectancy for less money. Before I get into proving them wrong with numbers, I'll point out that the people making these arguments are likely in one of two camps. Either they are "true believers", that is, a group that believes counter-arguments to something they dislike, regardless of how little proof there is, because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and quite possibly because their world-view is tied up into their beliefs (as opposed to reality). Or they are "mouthpieces", that is, a group of people who know the arguments to be false, yet still use them as an attempt to derail policy or conversation about policy through misinformation.

To get deeper into what birth/death rate statistics I'm talking about, the claim is that because of the higher US murder rate, and because we consider "live" much smaller premature births in the US, that our life expectancy numbers are unfairly biased downwards, so comparisons against health care are not comparable by using life expectancy. I intend to show that murder rates and infant mortality rates make little difference in the numbers, so the claim of not being comparable due to those numbers is bullshit.

First, we will start with a "nominal age", that is, an age at which we assume everyone dies if they aren't murdered or die in childhood. It turns out that, thanks to statistics, this works the same as if there was a more complicated distribution that just happened to average out to 80 years old. I use 80 because life expectancy for industrialized nations is about that, but we can use any age; the only difference is that higher ages scale the difference between the nominal age and expectancy up.

We will then have a "homicide rate", that is, the number of murders per 100,000 people. When we perform the calculation, we will assume that all people are murdered when they are born. This biases the calculated pseudo "life expectancy" number down, but because we'll do this for all countries we calculate, this is fair. We get these numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

We have an "infant mortality rate", that is, the number of infant deaths per 100,000 people. We obviously assume these children die when they are born. We get these numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

We will also, for the sake of argument, replace "infant mortality rate" with "under-five mortality rate", also getting these numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

We also need "birth rate", so as to determine how much "infant mortality rate" and "under-five mortality rate" affect our statistics. We get these numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

This stuff should be used as reference, please see the comments for better math, which still shows the US behind.

First, we are going to find out the proportion of the population that is murdered. That is simple; we take our "homicide rate" number, and divide it by 100,000. In the case of the US, that is 6.8 / 100000 = .000068 . We'll call this h_prop.

We then find out the portion of the population that is born in any given year. For the US, that is 14.0 per 1000 population, which we can scale up to 1400 per 100,000 population (to be consistent), which we then scale back down to .014 . But, we need to know how many of these children die before their time. In the US, the infant mortality rate is 6.3 per 1000 live births, or .0063, which we multiply by .014 in order to get the actual proportion of our population that dies as an infant; .014 * .0063 = 0.0000882 , we'll call this im_prop. Doing the same number for under-five mortality gets us 0.0001092 , we'll call this ufm_prop.

We now have enough numbers to do our calculations.
age * (1.0 - h_prop - im_prop) -> ifm_exp -> life expectancy assuming only infant mortality and murder.
age * (1.0 - h_prop - ufm_prop) -> ufm_exp -> life expectancy assuming only under-five mortality and murder.

80 * (1.0 - .000068 - .0000882) = 79.987
80 * (1.0 - .000068 - .0001092) = 79.985

Looking at the worst-case under-5 mortality rate, (80-79.985)*365 = 5.17 days. Yep, the homicide rate in the US combined with under-5 mortality rate, assuming that murders happen when a person is born, adds up to a change in life expectancy of 5.17 days.

I created a google spreadsheet, which you can view and make a copy of if you have a google account, which will perform these calculations for you: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiQlFAGAyO9SdEdaUm9zVnNVY1J0Q1JMMGJLT2xZcFE&hl=en


As I just showed you, using simple math, the argument that birth/death rate statistics make the numbers not able to be compared from country to country is just plain bullshit. Making claims of them being not comparable and not running the numbers is at best lazy, but really, it shows how little some people care about actually making this an argument about apples vs. apples. This is apples vs. death squads, apples vs. murders, and any other nonsensical comparison that can be done to derail the real discussion; health care in America could be better, and it is shameful that people are making arguments based in obvious lies, especially when the lies hurt people who aren't getting health care (you know, the 30 million people without health insurance). Shameful.

Update: a friend has pointed out an error in my math, read the comments for better math. The spreadsheet has been updated. Also, the US is still behind.

While browsing digg this evening, I happened upon a link where people talk about a proposed bill to eliminate the federal income tax. If you care, you can go to digg.com, I'll not link any of it.

One of the things that struck me was how short-sighted people were. To pay for all of the things that the government provides*, the money needs to come from somewhere. Either it is funded by taxes, or we print money that doesn't exist.

(* Let us not argue about social security, roads, medicare, welfare, armed services, ... Talking about changing those things are outside the scope of this conversation.)

Firstly, let's talk about "progressive income tax". Progressive refers to the idea that as you earn more money, your tax rate is supposed to increase. The goal is that those who earn more money are more able to pay more, and thusly will feel less of a pinch. In the US, there are bits here and there whose goals are to reduce the tax burden on those who are (presumably) less able to pay. Little things like deductions per child, home loan interest deductions, education tax credits, ... These go a long ways towards making the effective income tax rate for households earning less than the median income (~$44k/year) about 4%. As incomes increase, deductions aren't scaling with income, and people pay more taxes. That's the way the current system works.

A regressive tax system, effectively, is one in which people who are less able to earn become disproportionally less able to live. Sales tax, as an example, is a regressive tax system. People with higher incomes don't worry very much if they pay an extra 5% on groceries or clothing, but those with lower incomes start having to choose whether they are going to skip a meal or not buy a pair of socks (if you think this is hyperbole, you obviously haven't had to pay rent, feed, and clothe yourself on $1k/month, which over 8.5% of US households have to live with).


As I was saying earlier, the money to fund things that we take for granted needs to come from somewhere. If we eliminate the federal income tax and, for example, replace it with a sales tax (as is proposed), what happens? Those 50% of Americans on the bottom (as well as many people quite a ways up) pay more taxes, trivially. Now wait a second...wouldn't that be fair? I mean, if everyone pays the same fixed rate, isn't that fair? Maybe in the strictest sense of fair, but when you lose $200/month of your $1000/month income...you stop being able to afford little things like food, or rent, or shoes. Yeah.


But let's pretend for just one moment that you don't care about human suffering. Let's say that you only care about yourselves and maybe your immediate family. That's fair (though I reserve the right to call you a dick).

Looking at numbers from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0464.pdf, in 2005 the US government collected ~$935 billion in personal income taxes on ~$5.14 trillion in taxable income, and ~$7.42 trillion in total personal income (notice the difference there? that's deductions at work). Let us imagine for 2 seconds that taxable income reasonably represents money that is spent on taxable retail goods or services, and 100% of this is spent on retail goods or services for which the "federal sales tax" would be applied (despite the fact that this is an *insane* idea, as people invest, buy homes, and don't buy taxable retail goods or services with 100% of their taxable income...). That would require a flat sales tax rate of 18.2%* (even on other taxes!). For a household making median income, that is about $667/month you no longer have to spend (or $200/month if you were making $1k/month). For those of you earning at or about that, what would you do if *you* lost $667/month? According to http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9884/12-23-EffectiveTaxRates_Letter.pdf, at a 18.2% tax rate, people would be paying ~5-423%** more taxes (it is 1-14% in absolute effective rate calculations) than they were before in total effective taxes (including social security, excise, etc.) for *everyone* in the "bottom 80" of US households earning less than $90k/year.

(* tax_rate = ($935 billion / ($5.14 trillion x actual_taxed))
(** tax_rate_increase = 18.2 / bottom_row_rate ; from bottom row of the top table of table 1 of the cbo.gov liink above)

But it would be *far* worse than that. You trim off even a modest 10% for savings and currently existing state sales taxes (set actual_percent_taxed=.9 in the above function), and your tax rate increases to 20.2% (or 16-470% more taxes than before for the bottom 80), which makes it suck for people *now* up to the "bottom 90" who make less than ~$125k/year (this is estimated with a linear function from the chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States ). Would you pay 20% more for exactly what you are getting now? Of course not!

But that's what, effectively, some of these people are advocating.


And the worst part about it is that those who are saying "down with the federal income tax" are shills without even knowing it. The *only* people who would benefit from the abolishment of the federal income tax system and the institution of a "sales tax" like system are those in the upper 10% of personal income earners. But who is ranting and raving? People who haven't actually looked at the numbers. People who surely aren't earning more than $125k/year. People who would be *fucked* by the system in which they are advocating.

Similar "y'all would get fucked" conclusions can be drawn from running the numbers for "let's abolish corporate income tax".

Remember my post the other day about shunning liars? Well, time to shun John and Cindy McCain. Turns out they've been lying for years about the situation that led up to the adoption of their daughter. For years they have claimed that Mother Theresa herself convinced Cindy to take the child home, but that was a lie. Oft-repeated, touching (in that "you needed to be convinced by Mother Theresa to help a kid?" way), but a big fat lie.

What's even worse? They both cried when talking about how speaking with Mother Theresa had touched their lives. But I suppose you have to make the lie believable...with another lie.


Couple this with McCain's 2001 belief that Rumsfeld + Cheney are the best national security guys for the job in 2001, and questioning his judgment is almost an expectation.

I've been trying to keep my nose out of politics this year, but I couldn't help reading the following from here and wanting to vomit.

McCain has even prompted alarms from the right’s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of “Unfit to Command” in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, “The Obama Nation.”

Corsi’s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi’s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author’s “scholarship.” If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi’s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi’s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received “strong” financial support from a “group tied to Al Qaeda” and that “McCain’s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.”

In my youth, we would shun liars.

Some time last week, I ran headlong into the 'everything in Iraq is Al Quaeda' nonsense I posted about a few weeks ago here. In particular, there was some mid-level officer talking with NPR about the struggles our troops are facing in Iraq. He discussed no less than a half-dozen different insurgent groups, with a seeming even split of Sunnis and Shiite factions. One point he made was that the Sunni factions weren't really friendly towards each other, and neither were the Shiite. Basically, there are many different groups, all fighting each other *and* us.

So how does he end the interview? More or less 'all these Al Quaeda groups are making it hard for us', referring to the just-mentioned variety of Sunni and Shiite insurgent factions that are all fighting each other and us. I once again call shenanigans.

What a tangled web of lies our government and journalists are weaving. Well, not really tangled.

It seems as though in the last couple weeks, when the government or journalists refer to what we used to call "terrorists", "insurgents", etc., they are instead calling them "Al Qaida" (or Al Qaeda, or just Qaeda, Qaida, etc.). You can read more about it at Salon. Heck, some have even gone so far as to change history and claim that the battle of Falluja was directed towards "top Qaeda leaders", where in 2004, no mention of Al Queda could be found regarding Falluja, only Iraqi Sunni insurgents.

That and other news today from The New Yorker. That's right dear readers, the Secretary of Defense and a cadre of generals lied to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, claiming that they did not have access to the report about what happened in Abu Ghraib. Where in fact, ''in January information about the photographs had been given "to me and the Secretary up through the chain of command ...''.

So, interesting happenings in news today. Not only did Bill O'Reilly basically admit to being into the whole 'white, christian, male power structures are good' thing, he kind-of gets John McCain to admit in agreeing with it too. Watch the video. Now, it's pretty obvious that O'Reilly is all about hegemony, one would need to ignore 99% of what he says to believe otherwise, but I have the sense that McCain was attempting to agree with the 'needing a cap', not Bill's explicitly prejudiced perspective as to why there should be a cap. But maybe that's just me hoping for the best in the only republican candidate (that participates in the debates) who is against torture.

Now, ignoring the commentary from both the Huffington Post and The Dallas News, we get two reports here and here that Dubya is spending his time with his friends asserting "I am the president", and that "if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK". If I wasn't so disturbed by his intent on forcing America to be in a war until 2009, I would perhaps be more disturbed by his acting like a 5-year old arguing with his mother over a candy bar. I'm not a politician, but it seems to me that if you want people to trust you, you tell them your intent, and you follow through. He doesn't need to tell the public, but he at least needs to tell his generals and his chief of staff so that anyone can try to say, "There really is a plan!" Because right now, the majority of America has no idea what his plan is other than "keep them in Iraq until I'm out of here".

The more or less unregulated NSA wiretapping from October 2001-March 2004 was determined illegal by John Ashcroft and James Comney in March of 2004, yet Dubya ordered it to continue. More information from Salon.com. Alberto Gonzales has been trying to keep Comney from testifying for over a year, I wonder why.

When your attorney general says, "program X is illegal", and the DOJ refuses to sign off on the legality of program X, yet you order X to be done anyways, that's a federal prosecution waiting to happen. But hey, illegal domestic surveillance and the rounding up of innocent resident aliens are just another page in the playbook of violating American civil liberties and basic human rights.

Here's an interesting blog post about the Clinton administration witch-hunt that occurred during the summer of 2001. Interesting item: approximately $1 billion was spent to indict zero former Clinton administration officials.

We only need to look at my last blog post to see an example where two former White House staff members disenfranchised 1 million voters. Yeah.