Former Confederate states more likely to impose death penalty.

A table in an articke at the BBC got me thinking.

The fifteen states who have executed most people since 1976 (in order of number of executions, not adjusted for population size) is as follows:

Texas
Virginia
Oklahoma*
Florida
Missouri
Georgia
Alabama
Ohio**
North Carolina
South Carolina
Arizona*                           
Arkansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Indiana**

* Oklahoma and Arizona didn't become states until long after 1865. They were then federal territories (proto-states) which allowed slave ownership, so the chances are they would have joined the Confederation, but we'll never know for sure, so that gets it down to thirteen states.

The thirteen Confederate states were

Texas
Virginia
Florida
Georgia
Alabama
North Carolina
South Carolina
Arkansas
Louisiana
Tennessee**
Mississippi
and possibly, depending on whom you believe,
Kentucky**
Missouri

** You are left with exactly the same list of eleven states if you remove Ohio and Indiana from the first list, and Kentucky and Tennessee from the second. Interestingly, those four states are a contiguous bloc (arranged north to south), so they appear to have swapped places.

Ho hum, coincidence, causation or correlation..?

We know that the US justice system is incredibly racist and can assume that the former Confederate states are the most racist states. So I think it is correlation, i.e. having been a Confederate state and executing a large number of people have the same common cause.

In their own words.

While googling around for something else, I chanced across an article in The Guardian:

Fionnuala Earley, residential research director at estate agents Hamptons International, said: “House prices have completely outstripped income growth.

“The biggest factor is that in the run-up to the crash, interest rates were low, so you could afford to service a bigger mortgage then.

"There was also low inflation on essentials like food, fuel, transport and utilities, so people had more money in their pockets and were able to gear up for bigger mortgages.”

Yet again, the Homeys cheerfully admit that most of the gains of economic growth go into higher land prices.

Adam Ruins Everything: Why you should tell co-workers your salary

He makes a good point here about information assymetry:

Janis Joplin "Me and Bobby McGearchange"

The first verse/chorus is in G, at 1 min 16 secs they shift up a tone and do the rest of the song in A. Funny how I've only just noticed:

Killer Arguments Against Citizen's Income, Not (15)

Sobers appears to think that he can win an argument by repeating things which are not just untrue, but he knows to be untrue, from the comments here:

1) There's a difference between working because you want to (and enjoy it) and because you have to pay the bills. I don't have to work, but I do. But equally I know I don't have to so there is never the stress of having to. Its entirely different. Give people who currently have to work the chance not to, even for a slight pay cut, and many will grab it.

Duh.

We are not talking about a "slight pay cut", we are talking about the loss of your entire net earnings, as you would keep the UBI either way.

With the current welfare system, the difference in net income between a low/median paid job and a full-on maximum benefit claim (if you can wangle it) is negligible.

So a UBI would be a lot less of a disincentive to work than the current system. By some twisted logic, he is claiming exactly the opposite.

A sensible UBI would be somewhere between £70 - £120 a week, similar to current benefit levels (depends on what you do with Housing Benefit). I think just about everybody would prefer more than that.

2) They are usually working in the black economy while claiming benefit, so such work is untaxed and unofficial, so not necessarily relevant to a UBI argument. Would such people take official taxed employment if they received a UBI instead of illegally claiming benefits? Maybe, maybe not. Particularly not if the marginal tax rates were higher - the incentive to continue in the black economy would be greater than today.

Kick off with a crass generalisation, which is not true.

How and whether we can collect tax from people currently working cash in hand is a quite separate topic and not relevant to the debate.

Having looked at the numbers in depth, like everybody else interested in the debate, Sobers knows perfectly well that there would be no overall increase to marginal tax rates, so I don't even know why he says that.

And clearly, with a UBI and no means-testing, the total marginal withdrawal rate would fall from 80% - 90% at present to nothing more than the basic rate of tax plus NIC (call it 32%).

Which in itself, is less of an incentive to work cash in hand.

3) While it's possible, it's not very nice, and would involve giving the State a massive control over your life.

Total and utter crap. Most parents receive Child Benefit, nearly all pensioners get a state pension, cash in the bank every month, job done.

If on the other hand you could stay exactly where you were living, and have a UBI drop into your account each month with no strings attached and no hassle of dealing with the benefit system (which is a job in itself at times), then the work/not work calculation is far easier, it comes down purely to £££ vs leisure time etc, than a complete life upheaval (which going onto the current benefits system would entail).

Somebody on welfare, whether that's £71.30 p/w Income Support or £71.30 p/w UBI has plenty of "leisure time" and is pretty much struggling at the margins. Most of them would prefer to have paid work.

4) So? My argument is that if you set a UBI too high many people will choose to live on it and stop paying any taxes, thus meaning those who do must pay higher taxes to compensate, and so on in a downward spiral.

That appears to be his Killer Argument. "If you set it too high", FFS. Nobody has ever suggested anything other than set it at a sensible/affordable amount i.e. in the range £70 - £120 p/w.

5) Again so? If loads of people stop paid work, live on their UBI and do voluntary work, the tax take again drops, and taxes have to go up on those still working, as above.

IF IF IF IF

The current welfare system discourages work (paid or otherwise). A UBI is neutral about it. Ergo, with UBI more people would be in work (paid or otherwise).

My argument has nothing to do with puritan ideals, I'm not arguing that people should work for the good of their souls, I'm arguing that a UBI set too high will necessarily destroy itself. Its an entirely practical, not moral argument.

Again the "too high" mantra. This is the third time he has trotted this out.

This is a futile argument, you might as well argue against having a minimum voting age on the basis that if you set it "too high", only a few old age pensioners will be allowed to vote and if you set it "too low" then parents of young children will effectively get extra votes. Or against speed limits, on the basis that if set "too high" they will have no effect or set "too low" the country will grind to a halt.

Killer Arguments against Citizens' Income, Not (14)

In the comments to the last post on CI/UBI, Sobers wrote:

You're assuming those who currently net payers-in will continue to pay into the pot at the same level for those who are net recipients. If the amount is set at a level that allows a reasonable lifestyle (say at current benefits cap level for a family of 4) then significant numbers of people will say 'F*ck it, I'm not working 40 hours a week to get only a few £££ more, I'm going to take it easy and take the UBI and do nothing instead'.

However, once again, what we observe in real life tends to contradict how many people think human beings behave based on the prejudices handed down to them.

1) Landlords, non-exec directors, the heirs of rich parents and other people with unearned incomes still work, on the whole, even when their incomes mean that they don't have to. Some don't, obviously, but surprisingly few.

2) People are regularly had up for working when claiming benefit. Why should they risk breaking the law and being prosecuted, when they could simply adopt the attitude "I'm going to take it easy and take the dole and do nothing instead"?

3) It is possible for almost anyone to game the system and end up with enough to live on and a council house rent free, but the vast majority don't. If we are all inherently lazy, why not?

4) If the terminally lazy give up work to subsist on their CI, that means there are more jobs available for the industrious. Who wants a lazy bastard working for them anyway?

5) Voluntary, unpaid work - it's a thing!

This assertion has more to do with puritan ideas embodied in the Rule of St David, "He that does not work, neither shall he eat" than it does with actual observations of human nature or economics: the lazy should be forced to work for the good of their souls, and sod the wretched employer who has to try and wring some value out them in return for what they pay them.

YPP (London) meet up, Friday 4 May

1. It looks like nice enough weather for a Friday meet-up tomorrow.

2. We'll be at The Brewmaster nr Leicester Square from 5.20 until 6.30 or so, if you think you'll turn up later than 6.30, please get in touch gmwadsworth@gmail.com or 07954 59 07 44.

Leicester Square Tube Exit 1, turn left and left again into the alleyway (St Martin's Court). We put a yellow YPP leaflet on the table so that you can find us.

3. Topic (light hearted). I missed the deadline for getting on the ballot paper for the local elections yesterday, so it was the usual toss-up between voting for UKIP or Green. I would have voted UKIP this time but they weren't on the ballot paper either, so I voted Green. For whom did everybody else vote?

"Why every estimate of UBI that simply multiplies the number of recipients by the amount received is simply wrong"

Good article by Scott Santens which save me the bother of grinding some numbers to illustrate the point.

In his example, even though the income tax rate/withdrawal rate is 40%, the actual net transfers as a % of total income are only 12.5%. The lower the initial inequality of incomes, the lower is the net transfer amount.

Includes good quotes from Milton Friedman and Greg Mankiw explaining why negative income tax and UBI come to exactly the same thing.

And while this is good fun mathematically, if you look at the UK's tax and welfare systems and how they interact and take away all the to-ing and fro-ing, overlaps, lacunas and administrative hassle, the end effect is not that far off a UBI anyway, so shifting to UBI would involve no additional net transfers whatsoever.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (440)

I did some calculations for the Labour Land Campaign a couple of years ago showing that if we replaced all existing taxes related to housing, private wealth etc with a fiscally neutral Land Value Tax, it would work out at about 0.7% of what each house is worth.

Unsurprisingly, if you can be bothered to look at actual numbers, most people's lifetime bills would not change much; it's just that taxes imposed at random intervals (SDLT, CGT, IHT) would be replaced with a small additional annual amount, it's all swings and roundabouts.

Tory head office got hold of the workings somehow, with entirely predictable results.

Squeal, piggies, squeal.

"Based on ONS data, immigration has put English house prices up by 20% over the last 25 years"

I must admit that I have downplayed the impact of immigration on house prices and rents, clearly, it must have had some impact. AFAIAC, it's just a population increase. As we well know, even at pathetic modern UK house building rates, supply has more than kept pace with demand. The real reason is the phasing out of Georgism Lite.

Via FullFact, who link to the ONS press release concerned:

Immigration has contributed 21% towards house price growth in England, according to analysis by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. But MHCLG also says the data doesn’t provide a complete answer and should be used cautiously. It found that income growth is the biggest driver of increased house prices.

English house prices have risen by 320% on average over this period... When factoring in inflation, according to the Consumer Price Index, the increase amounts to 137%.

People still throw this in my face when I try to explain about Georgism Lite. One cretin on Twitter linked back to the ONS figure and said, there, that proves it, it's all down to immigration.

I asked him, OK, even if the 20% figure is correct (it does seem plausible - even though FullFact do their usual and point to other research showing the impact was negligible or even negative at local level), how do you explain the other bloody 300% or 117% or however much can't be explained by immigration/population increases?

* Deafening silence*