I'll Take My Chances

I accept a lot of information at face value.

Specifically, I'm thinking about the news. If someone comes on the radio or the television and says, "There was an apartment fire, and four people were rushed to HCMC, two have since died," I don't really feel the need to call up HCMC and ask to speak to the burn unit about new arrivals. I just accept it.

On the other hand, if someone come on a thirty-second advertising spot, and tells me that their brand of automobile has the best mileage in its class, I feel a need to find out what that exactly means. For example, what class are they talking about? Are they speaking on average, of their whole fleet in that class; perhaps they mean that in that class, they have the vehicle with the best mileage? I need to know.

Choice of words can affect how I think about an ad, too. There's a carpet cleaning company now, ZEROREZ, that claims to use no soaps or detergents, instead using "Empowered Water™," which is an "innovative, non-toxic water based cleaning agent." Now, I'm no chemist, but this just seems...dodgy (thanks for the perfect word, Dan). I, for one, am less likely to use their services after such language.

Of course, any time someone puts REAL numbers in a spot, I'm instantly suspicious. There's a spot out now for CurrentSafe, a service sold by Muska Electric. The spot has facts such as "99 out of 100 homes have an electrical defect" and "there are more than 68,000 reported home electrical fires in the United States each year."

Now, I like numbers, but I like them better with sources. The USFA (United States Fire Administration) has a page that is exactly this information! After some searching around, I found that the most recent year I could get data for from this source was 2007. The document itself expresses that it is not 100% inclusive of all fires, that participation by fire marshals and other state agencies provide this data completely voluntarily. However, it's the best compilation of data I could find.

In 2007, there were 260,471 residential fires reported to NFIRS. Since CurrentSafe refers to "home electrical fires," I'm going to equate those. Of those fires, 6.6% were attributed to "Electrical Malfunction," which figures to be roughly 17,191 fires. Not really close to 68,000 (26.1%). 2.1% were attributed to "Appliances." Now, not all appliances are electric, but, let's suppose they are, and add that in (if you're keeping score, we're up to 8.7%). 3.2% were caused by "Equipment Misoperation/Failure," bringing our total to 11.9%. I can't really see a way to get many more of these sources to be "Home Electrical Fires," so let's quit thinking rationally, and start being silly.

18.4% of the fires reported have a cause of "Unknown." Adding that in brings the total percent to 29.3%, which is a little high...about 3.2% high....which is, coincidentally, the percent of fires attributed to "Equipment Misoperation/Failure." I wonder how Muska got their numbers.

Now, none of this has any context without knowing the number of homes in the United States (there are 110,692,000 regularly occupied housing units, according to the 2007 American Housing Survey). This means, supposing that every fire reported as "Residential" was occupied (which gives us the largest percentage), 0.2% of residences experienced a fire. Using CurrentSafe's numbers, 0.05% of residences had an electrical fire (using government numbers, 0.02%). For the mathematically challenged, your odds are 1 out of every 2000 homes, or 1 out of every 5000 homes, respectively. 

Considering that 1980 out of 2000 homes (or 4950 out of 5000 homes) have an electrical defect according to Muska, I think we'd all be better served spending our time money improving our culinary skills (32% of residential fires are attributed to "Cooking").

Until another time,

Salt

Think About The Reasons, Not The Numbers

I think about taxes about three times per year.

I think about them in September/October, because there are candidates running for office trumpeting their fiscal skills and tooting numbers that appeal to the masses. I think about them in December, because I need to get all my ducks in a row. The last time I think about them is generally in March, when I submit my tax forms to the respective state and federal government agencies.

As I drove to work, I heard an ad on the radio, for a website, "Tax the Richest". It's just a website, full of hyperbole, doom and gloom, and really large numbers. I could criticize that they provide no solutions, only a blanket rallying cry. I could also take cheap shots at their site design, but instead, I'd rather talk about "The Facts", as noted on their site, on the header menu bar. The document they reference is MN Dept. of Revenue, 2009 Tax Incidence Study (the top link, page 44 in the document, but page 58 in the PDF). But they don't link it, they don't want you to read it for yourself. They want you to take their interpretation, and believe what they want you to believe.

Their spin is that the lowest earners pay the highest taxes...let's check it out.

Let me get into some estimated numbers (you see, this is all estimated on 2011 numbers, which hasn't happened yet). The MN Dept. of Revenue estimates there will be 2,575,557 taxpaying Minnesotan households in 2011, 57% of which will find themselves in the lowest two income deciles (that is, 20%). This 57% of the population will provide $4,759,459,000 of the estimated $21,675,104,000 taxes collected in the year 2011, which is about 22%.

(Those of you thinking critically will say, "Wait, 22% is more than 20%, they really are paying a larger share of the taxes on their share of the income!" And you'd be right. So, we see their facts point to a flaw, but it's not nearly as big as they want you to think.)

It's generally accepted that a sales tax is regressive (meaning it costs the poor more and the rich less), because a poorer family will have to spend more of their income, exposing them to more sales tax (percentage-wise). However, the income brackets they have chosen are by population decile (10% segment). Since nearly 60% of Minnesotans find themselves making the lowest quarter of incomes in the state, this skews the data significantly. If you shift your perspective to income decile (back to the MN Revenue link, page 54 in the document, but page 68 in the PDF), you'll see that almost the entire skew of the "Percent of Income Spent As Taxes" comes from the sales tax issue.

2% is almost exactly the skew from Sales Tax being regressive. Suppose then, that instead of a 7.75% sales tax on purchased goods, we abolish the Sales Tax, and instead increase the State Income Tax by 2.2% (the state average sales tax paid). This would decrease the (estimated) tax burden on the lowest two income deciles by .5-1.5%, and increase the (estimated) burden on the highest two income deciles by .8-1.3%.

Look, a possible solution, to an identifiable problem, achieved through critical thinking!

A possible hangup with this solution, might be the loss of revenue from out-of-state persons who had been paying sales tax, and now are not liable for it (and who obviously don't pay our state income tax). I'm having trouble finding those numbers, though, so if anyone has a finger on those, that'd be great. I can't imagine it's more than .5% of the state income. I hesitate to say, "Raise Taxes on Business" because we all know they just raise prices and pass their costs directly to the consumers.

You know, we could use some critical thinking in politics. I'd run for office myself, but I doubt my platform of "Cut Spending and Raise Taxes!" would be very popular...but we wouldn't be worried about a deficit, or foreign powers owning our debt, or a myriad of other large problems you don't hear about from mainstream politicians.

Until another time,
Salt

A Better Night's Skeptic

We don't watch much TV in my house. What we do watch is the occasional PBS cartoon (think "Clifford" or "Fetch!"), some "Jane and the Dragon" on qubo, and sports. Any sport. Using our house rules definitions, figure skating and ballroom dancing are sports, but only at the national competition levels.

I was watching a basketball game with my seven year old son, and we were discussing the rules. Why the three-point arc doesn't touch the free-throw circle, why some fouls give free throws and some do not, why do they have to keep tucking their shirts in, etc. They got to the point where they need to take a TV timeout, and went to commercials.

NCAA playoff games are not marketing vehicles to the under-ten crowd. I was pretty certain I would not see Pokemon or GI Joe. I knew there would be a Cialis or Viagra commercial, but those are usually really circumspect, and he doesn't really watch that closely. When a network commercial gets thrown in for a somewhat suspenseful/violent show or movie (CSI, NCIS, and so on), I tell him, "You might cover your eyes for this," and he typically does. He's rather sensitive to that.

A commercial for mattresses came on. It must have been a Sleep Number commercial, because the tag line was "A Better Night's Sleep". The commercial ended, and my son huffed. I asked him what was wrong with the commercial, and he says, "Ha. A Better Night's Sleep. They just say that to try to get you to buy it."

Marketers of the world, beware. A seven year old boy is onto your scheme to try to get us to buy your stuff.

Until another time,
Salt