[HN Gopher] Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Suspicious discontinuities (2020)
Author : explosion-s
Score : 272 points
Date : 2024-03-20 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (danluu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danluu.com)
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| A friend of mine from a farming family in Europe once told me a
| story that his family would wait until the year one of his
| siblings was due to go to college and then invest in new farm
| machinery. Their reported net income for the year would reduce or
| go negative and the sibling would get to college effectively for
| free on a hardship tuition grant.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Yep very common tactic for small business owning families.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| At least in America, they usually look at the past 2-5 years of
| income to avoid these types of shenanigans.
| ridgewell wrote:
| In Canada, they use gross income instead of net income for
| student grants.
| tocs3 wrote:
| So, what happens if you work in an area where the cost are
| high but the margin is low? You might make $100K but have
| $85K in costs. You still have $15K in income. Does this
| apply to those self employed or only wage earners (gets a
| paycheck)?
| groestl wrote:
| In Austria, we just don't have tuition fees, which also
| avoids these types of shenanigans :)
| SilasX wrote:
| Huh? Wouldn't they have to depreciate it over several years so
| only a fraction of it would be a deduction in the current? Or
| is the idea that they'd buy so much capital equipment that even
| the fraction they could depreciate that year would wipe out all
| the other income?
|
| AIUI, the concept of depreciation exists in tax law precisely
| to prevent indefinitely deferring taxes via reinvestment
| (though it can't do anything about the portion of reinvestment
| going to pay salaries a la Amazon):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061439
| bombcar wrote:
| Many countries allow accelerated deprecation of designated
| equipment.
|
| Here's the IRS's - https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/additional-
| first-year-depreciat...
| richrichie wrote:
| > The following histograms of Russian elections across polling
| stations shows curious spikes in turnout and results at nice,
| round, numbers (e.g., 95%) starting around 2004. This appears to
| indicate that there's election fraud via fabricated results
|
| Two observations: 1. Why from 2004? Things were much worse in
| Russia before 2004. 2. The numbers of this election seem to agree
| with approval rating polls conducted by western agencies.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| By 2004, a former KGB spook was in power long enough to
| introduce a falsification system.
|
| The 1990s were worse _economically_ in Russia, but Yeltsin was
| a relatively liberal politician and possibly didn 't _want_ to
| falsify elections.
| lupire wrote:
| 2004 was the first election after the dictator took office and
| decided he would never leave. (He pretended to leave once,
| installing a puppet for 1 term, due to Constitutional limits.
| When he officially returned, he amended the Constitution to
| make himself dictator for life.) He's still dictator 20 years
| later.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| Haha, I recall seeing a similar plot with a "suspicious
| discontinuity" when I looked up data on home appraisal price vs
| sale price. I remember asking the loan officer why the contract
| was forwarded to the appraiser before they did the appraisal,
| because that might bias their assessment. She gave me a funny
| look and replied "that's kind of the point."
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah of course, the appraiser is a person who is paid to write
| down the predetermined number. The US federal government should
| nuke this industry as part of their crackdown on "junk fees".
| Either the appraiser serves a legitimate arms-length purpose or
| their whole line of business should go away.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I could see a third option as a "lemon detector". That is,
| instead of their output being a number, it would be a binary,
| intended only to limit downside risk in the worst cases.
|
| I think in practice this is indeed the role they play. If I'm
| "overpaying" by 20%, the appraiser will probably still "write
| down the predetermined number", but if I'm overpaying by 100%
| and taking out a mortgage to do it, there's a pretty good
| chance that the bank's appraiser is going to sink that deal.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's basically what they do, they're not to find the
| actual value of the property (that's more properly a tax
| assessor, perhaps) - they are there to make sure the
| valuation is "in the ballpark" to what it would liquidate
| for.
|
| An appraiser will never get in trouble if a bank forecloses
| on a $500k property and it sells for $450k or so, but they
| will get in trouble if the $500k property only sells for
| $200k - they'd need to explain why.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I think it's really a problem of different incentives.
|
| Somebody (A) at the bank does not want to give out loans that
| are well beyond a properties value.
|
| Somebody (B) _else_ at the bank is actually the one giving
| you the loan and makes money from you getting it.
|
| So A requires B to have an appraiser so they can't completely
| run away writing loans. From talking to some real estate
| agents, the appraiser will only fudge so much for you. An
| appraiser might agree that the house is worth 750k even if
| they actually think its 699k but if you try to get a 700k
| loan for a 350k house they'll write down 350k in their
| appraisal.
|
| --
|
| IIRC, the government's crack down on "junk fees" is mostly
| that you can't advertise a price and then inflate it later
| with fees. So as long as the bank states that they require an
| appraiser and their in-house cost is $X; it doesn't count as
| a junk fee. But if the bank says that the loan is going to
| cost say $5k in overhead and then later says it doesn't
| include appraisal fee then it be a junk fee.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > An appraiser might agree that the house is worth 750k
| even if they actually think its 699k but if you try to get
| a 700k loan for a 350k house they'll write down 350k in
| their appraisal.
|
| This is kind of the point. The appraiser isn't trying to
| find the "true value" of the house, otherwise buyers would
| hire appraisers prior to even offering a bid.
|
| The question that the bank wants answered is, "is this
| house sufficiently matched to loan amount such that if the
| borrower defaults, the house can be sold for enough money
| to recoup the loan?"
|
| And if the answer is "yes", then they write down the
| number.
| SilasX wrote:
| Semi-related: the time an appraiser raised the estimated
| value after the couple removed all traces of the place being
| inhabited by black people:
|
| https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/jacksonvil.
| ..
|
| Reddit /r/nottheonion discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/no
| ttheonion/comments/igk83g/jackson...
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Appraisals function as a major fraud reducer, especially for
| internal fraud.
|
| Appraisers will fudge $100k on the value of a $1m house
| because that's their opinion as an appraiser. They won't
| fudge $1m on the exact same house (2x value).
|
| That serves as a kind of cap on funny business to some
| extent. 10% of the value isn't going to make that much
| difference on the ability to pay for most borrowers so an
| excess $100k in the valuation doesn't _really_ matter anyway.
| As long as appraisals don 't get too out of line they serve
| their purpose.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| When I was selling, I must've gotten the only appraiser in the
| world that actually appraises rather than just follows the
| contract. Idiot lost me $15k on my house.
|
| But yeah, it's _very_ clear their appraisal, which is usually
| _dead on_ with the offer, is a sham. I mean, even just
| considering the incentive structure (Who's going to hire an
| appraiser who causes deals to go sideways?), it's clear that
| they're just a middleman taking their cut.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Appraisals are such a joke. We had an appraiser say that my new
| construction was going to appraise at $100k under cost -- so my
| broker fired him, ate the fee, and hired an old friend of his
| instead. She gave us the number we needed and the deal closed.
|
| Then again, the finished house then appraised at $50k _over_
| cost 12 months later when I converted the construction loan, so
| maybe the first appraiser really was nuts.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Similar to car prices, we see the same mental rounding effect in
| rents. People will rent a home for $2100 or $2200, sometimes even
| $2150 for those truly dedicated to price finding, but hardly
| anyone rents an apartment for $2137.
|
| Source: my data for the city of Berkeley
| https://observablehq.com/@jwb/berkeley-rent-board-data#cell-...
| Macha wrote:
| The car pricing seems to be that some amount of people round
| 79,999 down to 70,000 when determining mileage and so cars with
| 79,999km on the odometer are penalised much less than cars with
| 80,000km.
|
| I think the rent one is much more driven by "some landlords
| like round numbers for posting ads/doing their finances".
| bombcar wrote:
| The "round prices" is definitely a factor, the math may say
| to rent for $2134 but the landlord will either round that
| down to $2100 or up to $2200.
|
| And unless increases are limited by some law, they will
| usually only raise it by even amounts.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| You might get some of that if rent is raised by percentage.
| When I started my current job my salary was an integer multiple
| of $10,000. I got a raise at the end of my first year that was
| an integer percentage (3%, IIRC) so my salary was then an
| integer multiple of $100. The following year I got a raise
| again (it might have been an integer percentage, I don't
| recall) and my salary was just some random-looking integer.
|
| Rent-controlled Berkeley apartments are allowed to increase
| rent by some fixed percentage, so maybe you can see this in
| your data? But I don't think the math would work out so
| cleanly.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Very true, but the graph I posted is initial leases only.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I see you said that in your link. Maybe I should read more
| carefully before making comments.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Reading any part of it launches you into the top
| percentile already.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I went to school at a relatively late age and started in
| community college. The school/state had a policy where any
| independent income earners making less than 35,000/year would not
| pay tuition. A single dollar over that would require paying full
| tuition of ~$60/unit or about $750 a semester. One year I worked
| a little more overtime during the holidays than usual and
| realized with a week to go in the year that I'd go a few hundred
| dollars over, so I called out of a few shifts and nearly got
| fired over it. I barely squeaked in under the limit, and if I
| hadn't, there was pretty much no way I would have been able to
| continue school. It's not like I could suddenly afford it now
| that I made $35,001 vs $34,999. I have never understood why
| things like this don't use some sort of sliding scale, rather
| than absolute dividing line.
| hammock wrote:
| An instructive image of the welfare trap:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Welfare_trap.png
|
| People making $30K on welfare would need to make $81K at an
| actual job to have the same income after tax.
|
| More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap
| autoexec wrote:
| Something seems very off with that image. I've known a lot of
| different people who were on welfare over the years, and not
| one of them had a standard of living anywhere close to what
| someone who nets $60,000 a year does. That said, there is
| absolutely a cliff where you could risk a loss just by taking
| in more money.
| amanda99 wrote:
| The main feature of that image is "childcare" which seems
| to be a fixed subsidy of $16k (and "CHIP", ~$4k related to
| child health care).
|
| I don't know what the former means and how these are
| calculated, but if you don't have children, this graph
| would look a lot less exciting.
| autoexec wrote:
| The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far
| worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever
| it must not have been making up for the other costs
| involved with raising children.
| danaris wrote:
| That graph is also showing an _ideal_ situation--that is,
| you fully qualify for _and_ fully receive all of the
| benefits listed.
|
| That means you have to also know that you qualify for
| them, apply for them, prove that you qualify, oh, nope,
| whoops, you missed one piece of proof there--that means
| you have to start all over.
|
| You have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify,
| jump through all the hoops, you start receiving benefits!
| Now it's time to apply for the next one, get the
| _slightly different_ proofs together, send them all in--
| oh, what 's that? someone gave you just enough money that
| you went over one of the limits? you get nothing this
| year!
|
| A new year, you have to apply for each one, prove that
| you qualify....
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| 16k wouldn't cover daycare in much of the US let alone
| food, clothes, etc.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far
| worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever
| it must not have been making up for the other costs
| involved with raising children.
|
| Worse than someone who doesn't have to pay raise a kid
| isn't the same thing as worse than someone else with kids
| who makes $8000 more and therefore loses the $16,000
| credit.
|
| And the cliffs are only half the problem. Did you get a
| childcare subsidy? Only if you use approved providers,
| which charge more than your older niece would to watch
| the kids, and now the money goes to some bureaucratic
| corporation with lawyers and lobbyists instead of your
| own family, and you see your niece less often and don't
| talk to her dad as much and now he's less likely to offer
| to do you a favor when you need one or realize that you
| do.
|
| You also get a housing subsidy, but only for particular
| housing, which isn't as close to your job or doesn't
| allow you to pool resources with roommates, so now you
| have to pay more for transportation or most of the
| subsidy gets eaten by higher rents etc.
|
| The entire welfare system should be vaporized and
| replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI).
| hammock wrote:
| The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania's
| Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters
| who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda.
|
| Pennsylvania has a substantial program to pay for child
| care for many of its residents:
| https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-
| Care-Wo...
| amanda99 wrote:
| It is not: it's inspired by it.
|
| If you look carefully, the numbers are different. In
| Gary's picture, the cliff is from $29k to $69k or so; the
| one above is much wider.
|
| Also direct link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.
| aei...
|
| (It is funny though, the picture above seems to be very
| much from a serious libertarian.)
| autoexec wrote:
| > The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania's
| Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters
| who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda.
|
| In fairness, the linked image is sourced to a
| libertarian's blog and Gary Alexander is also a
| conservative who was appointed to Corbett's
| administration and was often criticized for extensive
| cuts to Pennsylvania's welfare programs which he often
| characterized as fighting fraud and waste until he
| resigned after a few scandals
| (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2380594/ex-
| penns...) including the fact that he was still living in
| Rhode Island and was charging tax payers for his
| travel/commute expenses.
| chefandy wrote:
| Well, this is well outside of my area of expertise, but the
| only factual dispute attached to the image in wikipedia is
| that SSI is only available to people essentially assumed to
| be out of the work pool. From the SSI site: "Little or no
| income, and Little or no resources, and A disability,
| blindness, or are age 65 or older." That's a pretty tiny
| slice of that graph. Maybe it just hasn't been thoroughly
| interrogated but my gut says that whoever attached that SSI
| criticism would have probably addressed more severe
| discrepancies first.
|
| The source-- a libertarian blog-- implies that the problem
| is welfare itself, but I think the bigger problem is a
| naive approach to means testing that is entirely divorced
| from economic reality.
| hammock wrote:
| The primary source is a welfare bureaucrat, Gary
| Alexander, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Public Welfare,
| not a libertarian blog:
| https://youtu.be/Ruzo8bm96Io?t=2191
| p_j_w wrote:
| This fact alone doesn't mean much. He was appointed by a
| Republican governor and could very easily be a
| liberterian ideologue to the same degree of said blog.
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| How much of that standard of living is based on credit,
| though? Credit is largely based on income. Housing, payment
| flexibility for amenities and vacations, big ticket
| purchases that reduce long-term costs, etc.
|
| When 3/4 of those making less than 50k and 2/3 of those
| making less than 100k are living paycheck to paycheck, that
| extra flexibility influences quality of life quite a bit.
|
| Quote (https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-
| cards/living-paychec...): * Statistics
| vary, but between 55 percent to 63 percent of Americans are
| likely living paycheck to paycheck. *
| Three in four Americans who earn less than $50,000 are
| living paycheck to paycheck, compared to roughly two in
| three of those making $50,000 to $100,000.
| deathanatos wrote:
| That graph needs [citation]s. The source it cites does not
| mention how they obtained the figures for childcare, and a
| questioner in the comments asks for, and does not receive, a
| source for that information. The source article itself
| doesn't even seem to be the source, it links to yet _another_
| article. That article _also_ doesn 't seem to be the source,
| the source appears to be ... a politician.
|
| The childcare part -- the largest and most problematic
| benefits cliff in the graph -- appears to be specific to PA.
| But PA doesn't offer a monetary childcare benefit: one would
| have to be arguing that _this is the specific dollar amount
| that the care is worth_ ... which ... IDK. I 'd like to at
| least _see_ that argument. But the vesting cliff, as
| depicted, doesn 't line up with any of PA's cutoffs,
| _either._
|
| So, this graph smells of statistical lies.
| hammock wrote:
| The original chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander,
| Pennsylvania's Secretary of Public Welfare.[1] Pennsylvania
| has a substantial program to pay for child care for many of
| its residents:
| https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-
| Wo...
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/Ruzo8bm96Io?t=2191
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _I have never understood why things like this don 't use some
| sort of sliding scale, rather than absolute dividing line._
|
| Because it's easier to pass a law that sets up such welfare
| when it has a simple threshold, or at least it was.
|
| Last time this article came up, someone referenced a group of
| lawmakers in the US who were working at smoothing out these
| awful discontinuities, but I can't quickly rustle up the link.
| bombcar wrote:
| And there are tons of these various programs, all with
| differing requirements, and some take into account others and
| some don't.
|
| Some trigger "automatically" (if you apply for X and receive
| it, you qualify for Y, Z) and that can have weird side
| effects, too.
| danaris wrote:
| Frankly, because many people think that any kind of welfare or
| assistance is, at best, a necessary evil--and more often just
| _evil_ --and they _want_ to make it painful, complicated, and
| hard to access.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| There were parts of what I described that were brutally
| difficult. Particularly, we would receive a certain $ amount
| to purchase books (that were frequently $500+ dollars per
| semester). However, the office that doled this fund out would
| frequently be _weeks_ behind, or your scheduled disbursement
| just wouldn't show up. Then you'd have to find multiple hours
| out of your work week to go down to the financial aid office
| to wait in line for hours in an office that was only open
| 10am-2pm. Or sometimes the complete scam of a bank /card they
| forced you to use had some issue.
|
| So, frequently, you wouldnt even be able to purchase books
| without a loan or extending credit til 1-2 months into the
| semester. by that time you could be having midterms and tons
| of assignment with no textbooks. I would frequently have to
| beg other students to let me photocopy sections of their
| books so I could do the assignments. Or resort to pirating.
|
| To them that's "working as intended" I guess. no amount of
| complaining ever got anywhere.
| lynx23 wrote:
| And given how much (light) abuse I know about in personal
| circles, and how some people think they deserve everything
| they can claim, strict rules are likely a rather good idea.
| munk-a wrote:
| > some people think they deserve everything they can claim
|
| If they are able to claim something doesn't it stand to
| reason that we think they deserve it? I am confused how
| you'd measure your qualification for welfare without using
| the qualification metrics.
|
| At the end of the day welfare in the US extremely stingy
| even if you manage to max it out - it can be a struggle to
| survive in a lot of areas due to a lack of CoL adjustments.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I have never understood why things like this don't use some
| sort of sliding scale, rather than absolute dividing line.
|
| They often do use sliding scales, but that's more complex (and
| expensive) to administer, and (because of multiple interacting
| programs) ends up not actually solving much of anything. Also,
| because of the way things (including available funds) work, but
| even ignoring budgeting for the increased admin cost, a sliding
| scale probably would start stepping down from full benefit
| where a sharp cutoff is, that would probably be more like the
| middle of the sliding scale, so if you "barely squeaked in
| under the limit" on the sharp cutoff version, you'd probably
| get _far less_ benefit under a sliding scale system.
| duxup wrote:
| I changed career paths post age 40 via a coding bootcamp.
|
| Despite being a terrible student when I was younger, I found
| had a great time learning, and I've really enjoyed my job ever
| since.
|
| I found myself in a strange position though, lots of services
| offered benefits to students, discounts, internships, storage /
| compute time etc. I was not enrolled in a traditional
| university (although they were administering it), and so I
| didn't qualify, for much of any of those kinds of offers. Most
| of the systems in place thought of students as a typical 4 year
| university student and frankly ... younger. One internship I
| applied to did not seem to clearly indicate they were only
| really interested in younger, and more traditional students
| until the second interview.
|
| Some of these rules I get, they don't want someone abusing
| their free / discounts for other reasons and they have systems
| in place for dealing with traditional students.
|
| With people changing jobs and seemingly continued potential for
| the need for job market retraining and related disruption and
| etc ... it feels like it's time to make some adjustments as far
| as what a "student" is and so on.
| thfuran wrote:
| >One internship I applied to did not seem to clearly indicate
| they were only really interested in younger, and more
| traditional students until the second interview.
|
| Well, you missed out on a lucrative lawsuit there if you're
| in the US. An interviewer telling someone they're not going
| to be hired because they're over 40 (or even just because
| they're not young enough, when they are over 40) is legally
| equivalent to telling them they're not going to be hired
| because they're black or Jewish.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| It's because the people who make such rules are both innumerate
| and if not lazy then uncaring.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Not to condone the school's policy, but could you have donated
| the excess income to charity to get your taxable income back
| under the limit?
| gringoDan wrote:
| Probably not relevant unless you have itemized
| deductions/donations above the value of the standard
| deduction.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| (2020), but still interesting.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > It's generally believed that this is caused by a discontinuity
| in youth sports:
|
| > 2. Within a given year, older kids are stronger, faster, etc.,
| and perform better
|
| I've seen a few youth ice hockey games and by god it's just
| unfair; there's a kid like a foot taller than the rest. I'm kind
| of surprised there isn't some system that buckets kids by size ,
| it can't be fun for the small kids to get elbowed in the neck
| every time they bump the tall guy.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I remember playing basketball as a kid and being very
| entertained beating kids that were much taller than I was.
| Sure, they had the height, but they lacked so many fundamental
| skills and sometimes it was clear they didn't think they had to
| work very hard or do practice drills because they were tall.
|
| Fun fact, the ball and hoop don't care about any of that. It
| lets me steal it from you and it lets me put it into the hoop.
| The scorekeepers even add two to the scoreboard!
| gopher_space wrote:
| > Fun fact, the ball and hoop don't care about any of that.
|
| Tangent: I grew up around a high school basketball coach and
| saw that _all_ of the adults knew exactly who was going to
| college in which sport, and usually by late jr. high. We 'd
| go to games just because he said some kid on the visiting
| team was going pro and that's exactly what happened.
| robk wrote:
| Can you expound more? How did this work across different
| fields of sport? I assume a basketball scout can recognize
| talent early in their domain but how is it crossing sports?
| toast0 wrote:
| If you've ever played Nintendo's Ice Hockey (1988), it's super
| realistic, and the tradeoffs of big vs little are clear: little
| guys bounce off of big guys and big guys move slow.
|
| My kid is in 12U youth hockey and is a big guy, and yeah,
| smaller kids can often usually skate around him, but if they
| bump into him, they fall over, and often he'll get a "big kid
| penalty" which means he gets a break in the penalty box for the
| crime of being tall and physically near a smaller player who
| fell over. We had to do a bit of coaching on how to make
| (allowed) physical contact so it reasonable contact doesn't
| look like prohibited contact (mostly be sure to have hands off
| when kids are falling, it's real easy to look like cross
| checking when it was actually just incidental contact).
|
| Some of the littler kids seem to have a lot of fun getting away
| with a lot more physical play than he can. Although he says he
| enjoys it when a small kid gets mad at him and tries to knock
| him over, too. So at least so far, seems like everyone is
| having fun.
|
| I don't think you can really just bucket kids by size and
| ignore age though... there's a lot of mental development
| between 10U hockey and 12U hockey, and putting a big 10 year
| old on the 12U team is often not right because the level of
| play is so much different, most 10 year olds won't keep up. At
| the same time, a small 12 year old on the 10U team is going to
| have a big advantage from age.
|
| Around here we do have two different leagues, one for
| 'recreational' teams and one for 'reputation' teams, and you
| more or less have to demonstrate a decent amount of skill to
| get on the rep team, and then you're playing with much better
| teams. All the teams are composed of a mix of big and small
| kids though.
|
| Edit to add: All that said, I think bucketing kids by age makes
| sense _and_ I agree that there can be advantage to being at the
| extremes of the cohort. Since the US school system usually has
| a different cutoff date (september-ish) than US youth hockey
| (jan 1), you might see different results where there 's grade
| level based high school hockey and age based youth hockey...
| but not in Canada where the cutoff is Jan 1 for both.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think you could bucket by age but have the ability to move
| kids around.
|
| The problem is that these youth sports can get very
| competitive, and then people will be tempted to move the
| bigger kids down to get an advantage.
| toast0 wrote:
| At least in USA Hockey, it's not too hard to get approval
| for kids to 'play up', our 12U team this year had 3 kids
| that were under age by one year. Getting approval to 'play
| down' is a lot harder. Our competitive league rules say
| (sorry for caps) "HAVING 10U PLAYERS PLAYING UP AT 12U IS
| STRONGLY DISCOURAGED, BUT OCCASIONALLY THERE ARE COMPELLING
| REASONS TO DO SO. EACH ASSOCIATION AT THEIR DISCRETION MAY
| ALLOW UP TO TWO 10U PLAYERS PER SEASON TO PLAY UP AT THE
| 12U DIVISION." And further players are on a case by case
| basis, determined by a league coordinator from the opposite
| side of the state.
|
| USA Hockey rules don't permit playing down unless a doctor
| says it's medically necessary, but then they're not allowed
| to play on competitive teams. Simply being small or
| unskilled is specifically not an acceptable reason. [1]
|
| IMHO: playing up is pretty easy to administer, but playing
| down would be very hard to administer fairly for
| competitive teams, so it's just flat out prohibited.
|
| Edit for further thought: If you have enough participants,
| it might make sense to try running Jan 1 leagues and Jul 1
| leagues and see if it makes sense to go to quarterly
| leagues too. Or maybe agitate to change the cutoff for
| Spring Hockey and see how that looks?
|
| [1] https://www.sedistrict.org/page/show/834907-playing-up-
| down
| munificent wrote:
| _> I don 't think you can really just bucket kids by size and
| ignore age though... there's a lot of mental development
| between 10U hockey and 12U hockey, and putting a big 10 year
| old on the 12U team is often not right because the level of
| play is so much different, most 10 year olds won't keep up._
|
| A friend of mine has a son who is giant for his age. The kid
| is 7 but he's the size of a late middle-schooler.
|
| One of the things that ends up being really difficult for him
| is that everyone around him assumes that he should be smarter
| and more mature than he is. They inadvertently expect him to
| be mentally the same age as kids the same size as him. It
| sucks because it makes him seem developmentally disabled or
| emotionally unregulated. He's not! He's a totally normal
| seven-year-old. Just a really tall one.
| toast0 wrote:
| Yeah, we definitely get/got a lot of that. At his current
| size/age, it's not so bad, but it was definitely a bigger
| deal when he was a newborn that looked like 2 months old
| (delivery nurses didn't understand why we were in their
| ward), and a preschooler who looks older, where there's a
| lot of development happening in a short amount of time.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I noticed the same in Ontario, any kids who weren't born in the
| first few months of the year had a huge disadvantage.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Suspicious Discontinuities_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28452926 - Sept 2021 (54
| comments)
|
| _Suspicious Discontinuities_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22378555 - Feb 2020 (297
| comments)
| rwmj wrote:
| Also UK VAT. Companies only need to register for VAT when they
| turn over more than PS85,000 in a year. This adds a great deal of
| extra complexity for running the company. Predictably a lot of
| companies earn just less than this amount. The graph is worth a
| thousand words:
|
| https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1024,quality=8...
| (from https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/04/11/britains-tax-
| ta...)
| bluedino wrote:
| One similar thing is getting a 1099-MISC for 'side work' in the
| USA
|
| For example, I'll do some hands-on work for a former employer.
| Rack some network equipment, go investigate something, install
| some hardware...They take it from there, I can bill a couple
| hours and it's a nice dinner for my wife and I.
|
| However, if I hit a certain threshold ($600?), they will send
| me a tax form and I'll then have to pay income tax on that
| money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > However, if I hit a certain threshold ($600?), they will
| send me a tax form and I'll then have to pay income tax on
| that money.
|
| No, the threshold at which you have to include the income in
| your taxable income ($400/yr) is lower than the threshold for
| the person paying you to provide a 1099-MISC ($600/yr from
| that payer.)
| bombcar wrote:
| Don't you always have to include the income even if you
| don't get 1099'd?
|
| The $400 is only if it's your _only_ income, otherwise
| plumbers could always charge $399 a visit and never pay
| tax.
| nominatronic wrote:
| A similar fun example is the distribution of Elo ratings on a
| chess site, e.g. here's the weekly distribution on Lichess for
| Bullet games (less than 3 minutes):
|
| https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/bullet
|
| It's easy to understand why this happens:
|
| - Player ratings will fluctuate by small amounts as they win and
| lose individual games.
|
| - People are happy to stop playing when their rating is at e.g.
| 1503, but if it's 1497, they'd rather play just one more game
| than leave it that way.
|
| - At any given time, most accounts are not playing, so the
| distribution shows a bias towards values just over a 100 Elo
| threshold.
|
| The other neat thing is that you can see this effect reduce as
| you look at longer time controls:
|
| Blitz (less than 10 min):
| https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
|
| Rapid (less than 30 min):
| https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid
|
| Which makes sense because the time and effort of gambling just
| one more game to get the rating back over the line is higher at
| the longer time controls.
| chatmasta wrote:
| > At any given time, most accounts are not playing, so the
| distribution shows a bias towards values just over a 100 Elo
| threshold
|
| FYI, that graph only includes players who were active (played a
| game) this week.
| nominatronic wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that out of all the
| accounts included, most of them won't be actively playing
| games right now.
| chatmasta wrote:
| In fact none of them will be, because it's computed by
| analyzing the rolling last 7 days, and each accounts
| "ranking" is whatever their ranking was at the end of that
| period (i.e. "now," more or less).
|
| Basically I'm not sure why you're saying that leads to a
| bias toward "slightly above 100."
|
| Ohh... unless you meant slightly above a _multiple_ of 100.
| I see now. Because people stop playing when they hit a
| milestone, right.
| abnry wrote:
| Another place this shows up is in online chess ratings.
|
| See Lichess: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
|
| Couldn't find this in Chess.com stats, but maybe they do some
| smoothing in their plot.
| chubbyFIREthrwy wrote:
| >One reason people were looking for ways to lose money was that,
| in the U.S., there's a hard income cutoff for a health insurance
| subsidy at $48,560 for individuals (higher for larger households;
| $100,400 for a family of four). ... That means if an individual
| buying ACA insurance was going to earn $55k, they'd be better off
| reducing their income by $6440 and getting under the $48,560
| subsidy ceiling than they are earning $55k.
|
| I had the opposite problem for the 2022 tax year: I turned out
| that, with investment losses and no earned income, my adjusted
| income was below the poverty line, which ... means your ACA
| healthcare subsidy is cut off entirely!
|
| https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-fami...
|
| The "logic" there (from reading discussions of the cutoff) is
| that, "well, if you're below the poverty line, you should be on
| Medicaid and not on the ACA exchanges at all, silly!" Okay, but
| if you have wildly varying income, and a high income from
| previous years, you don't know that you'll be "in poverty" this
| year, and won't qualify because of the past year.
|
| I was tempted to update my taxes to claim phantom income from my
| imaginary cash-based business, which would then get me the
| subsidy, but that feels ick.
|
| (Which, I know, being retired on crypto, I _also_ feel ick about
| taking the subsidies to begin with, but that 's a different
| issue.)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A reminder to anyone reading that there is no actual "opposite
| problem" to yours (which I'm very disturbed to hear about, hope
| things work out).
|
| For now, there is no income level cut off for ACA premium
| subsidies, just a limit that says you should never spend more
| than 8.3% of your AGI (more or less) on health insurance (more
| or less).
|
| This may change next year and/or in the future.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| At least in the government, there should be a law that any
| hypothetical scenario where someone making more money before
| government taxes/incentives would cause them to earn less after,
| must be quickly resolved by replacing hard cutoffs with
| gradients.
|
| No benefits should apply 100% for anyone making under a certain
| amount and 0% for anyone making over. Instead there should be a
| range they slowly decrease, so that if you make $1 more before
| the benefit you still get less than $1 after. Maybe even a lot
| less, like only $.30. But you should never _lose_ money.
|
| This is obvious. It goes to show how bad beaurocracy and subtle
| misaligned incentives are that these hard cutoffs ever existed in
| the first place.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| This is why people don't want to pay taxes at all
| baggy_trough wrote:
| It all comes back to the fact that government is a low
| accountability sector, despite what many people seem to think.
| callalex wrote:
| What is the point of saying something like this? Would you
| prefer that people just not bother to do anything and let
| poor people starve to death instead?
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| The "starve the beast" propaganda has been wildly
| successful and is seeded deep in American culture and
| psyche.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Vote for me and I'll show you how bad I can make
| government" has been supremely effective, somehow
| euroderf wrote:
| Replace one number (the cutoff) with two (the start and end of
| sliding part).
| orangecat wrote:
| Right, and this is one of the reasons why I support a UBI that
| replaces most existing welfare programs. Amazingly some people
| criticize UBI on the grounds that it removes the incentive to
| work, when it's almost exactly the opposite.
| bluedino wrote:
| I'd bet the race time data looks similar to weight-lifting data
| for certain thresholds, whether it's the number or plates or
| such. Goals people set and then they mentally stop themselves at
| that goal.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| We had something like this when we were on ACA one year. I hadn't
| been working that year, but I ended up getting a job in August
| and it looked like we were going to go over the income threshold
| because we have a rental and were getting rental income. I asked
| the renters to please not pay their rent for Sept-December until
| January of the next year. They happily complied. We were able to
| squeak under the threshold, but it was close.
| atulvi wrote:
| Need to add this one here
| https://twitter.com/martinmbauer/status/1769672126905090386
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| The worst one of these that affected me was money helping people
| in the 2008 housing crisis. qualifying was based on what
| percentage of your income your mortgage payment was. So I would
| have got it if I had made a little less money, or if i had bought
| a house I knew I couldn't afford. It felt like being punished for
| making the right decisions.
| Karellen wrote:
| So... people who'd been misled into making bad decisions and
| were being given help because they really needed it, made you
| feel like you were being punished by not getting similar help
| you didn't really need because you were making OK money and had
| avoided making the same kind of mistake?
|
| IMO, that's a _really_ glass-half-empty way of looking at the
| situation.
|
| You did good! Try to give yourself a break. People like you who
| didn't fall for the sleazy mortgage brokers helped limit the
| damage that the rest of society had to deal with. And maybe
| next time some society-wide con goes down, if you (or someone
| you love) is unlucky enough to get stung by it (because none of
| us are smart enough to spot the con-men 100% of the time),
| hopefully you (or they) will get the help that's available that
| time around when it is really needed.
| munificent wrote:
| This is like saying, "If only _my_ house had been destroyed by
| a hurricane too, and then I would have qualified for that sweet
| FEMA money. "
|
| I mean, sure, but you were still better off to not have your
| house destroyed in the first place.
| sukruh wrote:
| The discontinuities at the used care sale prices graph seems like
| an arbitrage opportunity on depreciation. Buy right after a round
| number, sell right before another, pay less on dep.
| neilv wrote:
| I was all excited when I saw on Zillow a decent new apartment
| complex in town with rents that were actually reasonable...
| until, after hours of studying photos and floorplans and
| neighborhood, I noticed a statement on Zillow, near the bottom of
| the scroll, in one of the tabs in right column, that the building
| is subsidized, and there's a permissible income range.
|
| While some of us could qualify while on early startup salaries, I
| don't know how I'd feel about subsidies as a techbro, and I know
| I wouldn't feel good about having to move from a nice building
| (big time investment, moving monetary cost, and quite possibly
| moving to a crappier building) because the startup was doing OK.
|
| I was disappointed, but not surprised. As a middle-class techbro,
| this is a very lite version of a much bigger problem that has
| affected many low-income people. News has long had stories about
| low-income people who are trapped with subsidies they need
| (housing, food, support for children, etc.). They make a lousy
| wage, and can't afford to get much of a better wage, because the
| societal safety net on which they depend would be ripped out from
| under them before they could afford it to.
| hollerith wrote:
| >I know I wouldn't feel good about having to move from a nice
| building because the startup was doing OK.
|
| Subsidized apartment buildings in the US don't make you move
| out if your income goes up: they just take away your subsidy,
| i.e., your rent goes up to what HUD calls the apartment's
| "contract rent". Then HUD (statistically speaking) directs the
| money they used to use to subsidize your rent to building more
| subsidized housing. HUD _wants_ successful people living in
| HUD-subsidized buildings, at least the ones with children in
| them, to serve as role models.
| neilv wrote:
| Interesting; that sounds enlightened of HUD.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| It's too bad income "cut-offs" even exist. Shouldn't it always be
| a smooth function?
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Smooth - definitely not. Continuous - yes. (SCNR.)
| noqc wrote:
| The author of the marathon paper explains the phenomenon he is
| observing, and then goes on to "reject that explanation" without
| attempting to do anything to control for it.
|
| >For example, the 2013 Chicago Marathon provided pace teams for
| 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, 3:15, 3:20, 3:25, 3:30, 3:35, 3:40, 3:45, 3:50,
| 3:55, 4:00, 4:10, 4:25, 4:30, 4:40, 4:55, 5:00, 5:10, 5:25, and
| 5:45.T he institution of pace teams then could provide an
| alternative explanation for the bunching we observe at round
| numbers.
|
| It would be easy to do, even. Restrict to marathons where the
| pace team spectrum is known to be of a specific type and see if
| the other spikes disappear. The author certainly has the data to
| do this, and isn't. _That_ is suspicious.
| jancsika wrote:
| > One reason people were looking for ways to lose money was that,
| in the U.S., there's a hard income cutoff for a health insurance
| subsidy at $48,560 for individuals (higher for larger households;
| $100,400 for a family of four). There are a number of factors
| that can cause the details to vary (age, location, household
| size, type of plan), but across all circumstances, it wouldn't
| have been uncommon for an individual going from one side of the
| cut-off to the other to have their health insurance cost increase
| by roughly $7200/yr. That means if an individual buying ACA
| insurance was going to earn $55k, they'd be better off reducing
| their income by $6440 and getting under the $48,560 subsidy
| ceiling than they are earning $55k.
|
| Except that in real life there is no /dev/null that you can
| immediately pipe in _exactly_ $6440 to hit your target.
|
| You have to spend your _time_ in order to achieve this reduction
| in AGI.
|
| And discontinuities being discontinuous means that the number of
| people who have the necessary training/experience to confidently
| achieve this in, say, three hours, is probably in the same
| ballpark as people who can successfully set up encrypted email in
| the same amount of time.
|
| For everyone else, it's going to take at least a week's worth of
| time to plan, double check, execute, triple check, etc. (And
| realistically double that, or more.)
|
| At 55K, you've already spent that savings in the value of the
| time you gave up to get the savings.
|
| People often make fun of free software developers for failing to
| properly value their own time. But at least that's not their
| domain of expertise. A financial hobbyist spending $2 of their
| time to save $1 is professional grade irony.
|
| Edit: clarification
| trevithick wrote:
| The example of buying options given in the article would take
| literally minutes for anyone with an existing brokerage
| account.
| nerdponx wrote:
| These aren't financial hobbyists.
|
| At $48,560, these are mostly people who don't have a lot of
| money relative to their living expenses, and are doing what
| they need to do in order to not feel totally broke. < $50k in a
| lot of places was already getting hard to raise a family on,
| even before Covid, all the moreso if you're paying full price
| for ACA exchange insurance, which was then and remains now
| disgustingly expensive.
| sanketsaurav wrote:
| aside: if you're on Arc browser, I made a boost that adds some
| styling to Dan's website to make the reading experience just a
| little better:
| https://arc.net/boost/80CE9A49-4D0A-48C6-9C53-13BF02696009
| mrandish wrote:
| Coding hard cut-offs like this into legislation, regulation or
| policies seems crazy almost to the point of negligence,
| incompetence or malice. Especially when it's so obvious such
| cliffs will incentivize behavior certain to cause negative or
| perverse outcomes. It's even more incomprehensible when
| implementing graduated thresholds is so well understood.
|
| A related common failure mode is baking in fixed, absolute
| thresholds for dynamic domains sure to evolve instead of linking
| thresholds to dynamic metrics (such as inflation, cost of living,
| etc).
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's often said that the cruelty is the point.
| thfuran wrote:
| If it were, why would they offer welfare programs at all?
| Surely an "indolence tax" assessed on anyone with income
| below a certain threshold would be more cruel.
| rhelz wrote:
| If you are upset about somebody not wanting to take that $50k a
| year job because it would cost them a subsidy, just wait until
| you hear about trust funds and inheritance!!
|
| If you think losing a $20k subsidy is demotivating, imagine
| inheriting $25 million.
|
| So instead of knuckling down and working hard to contribute their
| fair share, they are incentivized to just loaf. No telling the
| costs to society from these freeloaders.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| - Trust fund babies are far more rare than people making ~$50k
|
| - Trust fund babies will not qualify for much government
| assistance
|
| It is a net good for the economy and the individual if a person
| who is capable of making ~$50k does so within the workforce,
| rather than avoid improving their own life in order to qualify
| for assistance.
|
| This is not a moralization of the use of government assistance,
| it is a criticism of the incentive structures within those
| assistance programs.
| rhelz wrote:
| > It is a net good for the economy [for individuals to
| improve their lives]
|
| I agree. If you've just inherited $25 million, it would
| _still_ be better for you and for society for you to get a
| job--even a job paying $50k a year if that is all you could
| get.
|
| But...are you going to be _incentivized_ to do so?
|
| If you care about somebody not wanting to make $50k because
| they'd lose a $10k subsidy, how much MORE should you care
| about a $25 million subsidy disincentivizing somebody to
| improve themselves and contribute to society as a productive
| citizen.
|
| > Trust fund babies are far more rare than people making
| ~$50k
|
| That just means that imposing enough inheritance tax to
| incentivize them to work wouldn't effect enough people to
| have a negative effect on the economy. And lets not forget,
| the person being taxed is dead. They will feel absolutely no
| ill effects from the tax. Its all upside.
|
| Not Trolling here. I advocate a 100% inheritance tax, the
| proceeds of which should be dedicated to education,
| nutrition, and housing for the next generation, to achieve
| the following goal: Equal ability should be given equal
| opportunity to succeed.
|
| And just giving free money to one kid and nothing to another
| is the _absolute diametrical opposite_ of that.
| 2devnull wrote:
| The problem is labels, and beyond that political parties.
| Politicians like labels because the parties depend on labels for
| branding. They want to use rhetoric to group people, like "poor"
| or "rich" and the second you do that you create the
| discontinuity.
|
| Avoiding benefit cliffs requires more than understanding the
| issue of discontinuities, it requires the reduction of identity
| politics which neither party is on board with. Parties themselves
| are labels. They cater to the human desire to simplify and form
| tribes around those labels.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > However, a tax system that encourages people to lose money,
| perhaps by funneling it to (on average) much wealthier options
| traders by buying put options, seems sub-optimal.
|
| In expectation, they're likely not really funneling that much
| money to options traders. Indeed - if the option pays out, they
| likely will not have to worry about medicare/healthcare for quite
| some time.
| inopinatus wrote:
| I remember my deep disquiet at a tax return where my reportable
| income was exactly 2^n-1 for some integer n, naturally provoking
| obsessive checking and audit on my part.
| BWStearns wrote:
| It's interesting how the marathon discrepancies mostly disappear
| at left and right of the curve (looking at 2:30 and 6:30).
| Presumably top runners are putting out 100% of sustainable effort
| the whole time so there's no reserve energy and the slowest are
| similarly doing all they can just to get the race done. The folks
| in the middle are the ones who are putting in something less than
| 100%.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| For those of you that are fans of Jon Bois, he once noted in a
| video that the statistics for ball placement by an NFL ref is
| notably skewed towards 5 yard lines.
|
| Because, he thought, refs are human.
| bparsons wrote:
| This is one of the many reasons that means tested, rather than
| universal programs end up producing perverse outcomes. People in
| countries with universal healthcare, daycare and education do not
| have to limit their participation or productivity in the real
| economy in order to access essential services.
| qazwsxedchac wrote:
| Marginal rate discontinuities in the UK income tax system [0] are
| driving highly undesirable (from the taxman's point of view)
| behaviour. The increase in marginal tax rate from PS100K p.a.
| upwards has already led to:
|
| - doctors going part-time to keep their income below PS100K, in
| the middle of a shortage of doctors across the health system
|
| - employees turning down promotions because with the combined
| effects of income tax, student loan repayments and loss of
| childcare subsidy the effective marginal rate of income tax
| between PS100K and PS117K is > 100% (!)
|
| - single high earners (core voters of the present government)
| effectively subsidising families of middling earners (the
| opposition's core voters) because the discontinuities apply to
| single person's income, not combined household income
|
| The behaviour changes are simple first order effects. The second
| order effects on public service workforce availability and
| overall tax take were also highly predictable.
|
| [0]
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03270/tax_327...
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| But these tax rates are all under the current government, why
| would single high earners vote for it?
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| "Some other discontinuities are the TANF income limit, the
| Medicaid income limit, the CHIP income limit for free coverage,
| and the CHIP income limit for reduced-cost coverage."
|
| I know more than one person who intentionally keep low, part-time
| hours for this. One had a good, work ethic when on the job. Just
| didn't want to lose those benefits.
|
| Policy makers should definitely weight this into any decisions
| about reforms.
| vhcr wrote:
| We have some discontinuities in our tax code in Argentina, if you
| are an independent worker, and earn up to 11,916,410 pesos
| ($11,682) per year, you pay 793,332 pesos ($777) in taxes, around
| 6.6%, but if you earn one more peso, you enter the general
| regime, and start paying >50% in taxes.
| vavooom wrote:
| This article is so straightforward and well articulated to hammer
| in the main concept: statistics are funky!!
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