Gathered Statistics

[Elta]

Holy ****


Also, I wonder if I will qualify for section 8 when I am on my own *Strokes chin* (I only have two years left of scholarship and I will need to work while getting my masters)

 

[Mise]

Yeah, verifying that curve would be great. Different countries would be neat too.

Oh, and there is an incentive to get a higher paying job, even if your net income doesn't increase in the short term. It will open doors to even higher paying jobs, and thus pay off in the long term.

 

[Elta]

Well of course, not to mention the fact that getting any sort of benefits is an epic pain in the *ass.


* With the exception of WIC.

IIRC (Doing the math in my head)
If a mother and father have one child and only bring in 2200 a month - the mother will revive (while she is pregnant) a debt card she can use at grocery stores (called EBT card) for "healthy" food only - Generally fresh produce, milk, eggs, cheese, and beans. From what I've heard it is easy to get on this. The program continues until the child is 6.

Supposedly it saves money in the long run in health care cost.

I know a lot of people on WIC.

Food stamps, Section 8 - I've heard is all a long process though.
The exact number is a family under 185% of the poverty line.

 

[Mise]

Apparently the graph would look similar in the UK too: http://www.ifs.org.uk/mirrleesreview/press_docs/rates.pdf

These insights from optimal tax theory are contrasted with the work incentives inherent
in the current UK tax and benefit system. Four key deficiencies are identified:

1. The amount of gross income taken in tax and withdrawn benefits when people enter
work at low earnings is too high: for most groups it is close to 100% before individuals
are entitled to the working tax credit, and they remain high even with it.

2. The marginal rate of 73.4% that many low to moderate earners face when having tax
credits withdrawn is likely to be above the optimum rate even if people's decision to
work a little harder is relatively unresponsive.

3. Housing Benefit, the main means-tested programme though which the government helps
people on relatively low incomes with their housing costs has an extremely high with-
drawal rate. This exacerbates the problem of undesirably high marginal rates. It is also
hard to administer and is not claimed by many working families entitled to it.

4. While the system for administering income tax and national insurance contributions in
the UK is simple and efficient, tax credits, housing benefit and council tax benefit are all
burdensome to claim, relatively expensive for the government to administer, and prone
to significant fraud and error.

 

[Imrahil91]

Fun, interesting real-time statistics here: http://www.worldometers.info/ A few of them are doubtful, but very interesting nonetheless.

 

[Perfection]

Couple things about that chart:

1. How many people actually take advantage of all these incentives? If only a small portion actually do everything required to do that, then it really isn't an incentive for the vast majority of people even though it might be in theory.

2. Incentive income presumably can only be used for certain purposes. Maybe the dollar amount is the same, but the flexibility is greater with increased income, that could be an incentive regardless.

 

[Mise]

The thing is, when someone's offered to earn $X more, they don't sit there with their calculator and benefits forms and pamphlets and scales and tax regimes and rebates and food vouchers figuring out, "well, if I earn an extra $X, I wouldn't get this benefit, so I would actually be earning only an extra $y, which is much less than $X. Therefore, I should turn down the new job/bonus/overtime."

That said, from a policy POV, it's clearly rather perverse to punish low income workers for earning more, by removing benefits.

 

[Veritass]

The thing is, when someone's offered to earn $X more, they don't sit there with their calculator and benefits forms and pamphlets and scales and tax regimes and rebates and food vouchers figuring out, "well, if I earn an extra $X, I wouldn't get this benefit, so I would actually be earning only an extra $y, which is much less than $X. Therefore, I should turn down the new job/bonus/overtime."

Some do, of course. Just as my wife and I calculated that we should not bother trying to earn any more, because to do so would phase out our ability to deduct our mortgage interest on our income tax. We opted instead to have her work less hours and go take classes for fun.

That said, from a policy POV, it's clearly rather perverse to punish low income workers for earning more, by removing benefits.

Another "unintended consequence" that is perfectly logical in hindsight.

 

[Narz]

Winning chess tournaments increases your testosterone levels (couldn't find the exact stats).

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=5099590

 

[GoodGame]

I think this thread is going to need its own website.

In 2008, an estimated 11,773 people died in drunk driving crashes involving a driver with an illegal BAC (.08 or greater). These deaths constitute 31.6 percent of the 37,261 total traffic fatalities in 2008. (Source: NHTSA, 2009)

698 bicyclists reportedly died on US roads in 2007.

The "typical" bicyclist killed on our roads is a sober male over 16 not wearing a helmet riding on a major road between intersections in an urban area on a summer evening when hit by a car.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The value of a master's degree is pretty dependent upon the personality of the earner and the quality of the program. Highly motivated people with a degree from a great program will get lots of leverage from a masters degree. Less motivated or skilled people will peak early and their degree will be of less and less value. Crappy MBA programs don't really teach what is required to succeed in business and it takes a very motivated person to turn such a program into something of long term value. The dollar value of masters programs are skewed by the very high achievers who go on to earn millions of dollars.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The density of a Neutron Star, which is formed by the gravitational collapse of stars 1.5 to 3 times the sun's mass, is a mind-twisting 100 million tons per cubic centimeter (about the size of a sugar cube). They are about 100 km in diameter (estimates range from 20 to 300 km), which means you'd have to be traveling at half the speed of light (300,000 km/second (186,000 miles/sec)) in order to escape their gravitational force of 100 billion times that of the earth. They are over 150 times as hot as the sun, and can rotate 1000 times per second!

Space is nuts!

 

[pau17]

But Elta, Fedor...

Just in case.


"But Elta, Fedor is only 233 pounds naturally and he dominates everyone"

He is a freak of nature and unequaled dedication. It is unlikely that we will see another one like him, for generations.

Honestly.

...oh.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

 

[Atrebates]

Saturn controls the stock market

Best stats ever . Correlation may imply causation but it doesn't prove it...

http://obsessivemathsfreak.org/stuff/correlation/Saturn-SNP.html

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I've got a new pirates v global warming chart. Awesome.

 

[Mise]

H1-2004 wasn't playing ball though.

 

[peter grimes]

He's got it backwards - the Standard & Poors index is what's causing the Right Ascension of Saturn to migrate through the sky. That's the problem with correlation studies - 1/2 the people interpret them backwards

 

[GoodGame]

I don't see any controls for that experiment so, I'm not convinced.

 

[Integral]

I have a bit more on taxes. This comes from my casual digging through marginal tax rates, tax incidence, 'income traps' (where a combination of rising taxes and falling welfare leave after-tax income stagnant) and similar issues. The economists at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have similar interests, which I share here.


From Canada: Effective Tax Rates Flat, Possibly Regressive (1988; things have only gotten worse since)

Source: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative



Also from Canada: Marginal Rates Exceed 100% On Some Income Ranges

One can likely use this to get inferred after-tax income. Source: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative



Finally, one on connectivity: Travel Time to Major Cities