Grantcoulson's Blog

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

Curtis & Leroy saw an ad in the newspaper in and bought a mule for $100.

The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day.

The next morning the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry, fellers, I have some bad news,  the mule died last night."

Curtis &Leroy replied, "Well, then just give us our money back.."

The farmer said, "Can’t do that. I went and spent it already."

They said, "OK then, just bring us the dead mule."

The farmer asked, "What in the world ya’ll gonna do with a dead mule?"

Curtis said, "We gonna raffle him off."

The farmer said, "You can’t raffle off a dead mule!"

Leroy said, "We shore can!  Heck, we don’t hafta tell nobody he’s dead!"

A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis & Leroy at the grocery store and asked, "What’d you fellers ever do with that dead mule?"

They said,"We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do."

Leroy said,"Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a  profit of $898."

The farmer said,"My Lord, didn’t anyone complain?"

Curtis said, "Well, the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his  two dollars back."

    The answer to yesterday’s skill-testing question is, taxes. Taxes take up more of anyone’s income than any other single expenditure. The following data are Canadian, but they are not that different from those in the U.S..

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/newsandevents/news/7283.aspx

    “VANCOUVER, BC—The total tax bill for the average Canadian family has increased at a much faster rate since 1961 than any other single household expenditure, according to a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public policy think tank.

     The Canadian Consumer Tax Index 2010, which calculates the total tax bill of the average Canadian family, found that taxes have increased by a whopping 1,624 per cent since 1961. In contrast, expenditures on housing increased by 1,198 per cent, food by 559 per cent, and clothing by 526 per cent from 1961 to 2009.”

    Inflation, the increase in money supply “controlled” by central banks, has increased by 728 per cent. This means that food and clothing have become cheaper while taxes and houses, two areas rigidly controlled by government, have become much more expensive. Government regulations control housing via taxes on new builds and increasing scarcity of supply by nonsensical zoning regulation.

     ““Taxes have grown much more rapidly than any other single expenditure item for Canadian families to the point where taxes from all levels of government take a greater part of a family’s income than basic necessities such as food, clothing, and housing,” said Niels Veldhuis, the study’s co-author and the Institute’s senior economist.

      ““…., it’s important to remember that Canadian families are required to pay a myriad of additional and hidden taxes. In fact, personal income taxes accounts for only one third of the total tax bill paid by the average Canadian family in 2009.”

      Much like the Consumer Price Index calculated by Statistics Canada which measures the average price that consumers pay for the goods and services that they buy of their own choice, the Canadian Consumer Tax Index measures the price of goods and services that government buys on behalf of Canadians.

      The Canadian Consumer Tax Index calculates the total tax bill of the typical Canadian family by adding up the various taxes that the family pays to federal, provincial, and local governments. These include direct taxes such as income taxes, sales taxes, Employment Insurance and Canadian Pension Plan contributions, as well as “hidden” taxes such as import duties, excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, amusement taxes, and gas taxes.

     This year’s index shows that even though family incomes have increased significantly since 1961, the total tax bill has increased at a much higher rate. (emphasis added)

    “* In 2009, the average Canadian family earned an income of $69,175 and paid total taxes equaling $28,878—41.7 per cent of its income.

    * In 1961, the average Canadian family earned an income of $5,000 and paid $1,675 in total taxes—33.5 per cent of its income.

“Taxes have become the most significant item that Canadian consumers now face in their budgets,” Veldhuis said.”

…..“When we include deferred taxation – deficits – we see the total tax bill for the average Canadian family is actually $31,714 in 2009. This means Canadian families are facing a future tax bill of an additional $2,836,” he said.”

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    Today’s skill-testing question is: What expenditure takes the greatest percentage of almost every person’s income? Answer tomorrow.

    The dull of spirit–to wit, socialists–do not care what you do as long as you do what they mandate.

    This is an opinion about what seems to be a concerted effort by those with nothing better to do than make decisions for others–a campaign against sodium chloride–aka table salt–based on less evidence than the H1N1 panic.

from the National Post, April 24, 2010

“Savour the salt: Ignore the conventional wisdom. There is no evidence that salt, something we need to survive, is bad for us

     Reducing salt intake is only healthy if it saves more people than it kills. That can’t be proven

      Take all those health warnings about table salt with a pinch of salt. The evidence that our current levels of salt consumption do more harm than good for human health has little weight, any which way you look at it.

The Japanese have one of the world’s highest levels of salt consumption and are also the most longlived people on Earth, with the possible exception of Jews, whose kosher salt-laced foods rival those of the Japanese. In fact, the societies that consume the most salt tend to enjoy the longest life spans, and societal wellbeing throughout history has been tied to the availability of salt.”

    Those who want control are never constrained or informed by facts, but depend on the three Hs of spurious argument; hyperbole, hysteria and hostility.

      “Because the body cannot manufacture its own salt, and because body functions are utterly dependent on salt, we humans must continually take in salt with our food to survive — some estimate our physiological need at 5 to 10 grams per day. Salts perform service to us in our blood, in our organs and in our cells, and although medicine ultimately knows little about salt’s complex role in the human body, we do know that when we become salt-deprived, our body fluids react by changing the body’s level of insulin, potassium and excretions. Numerous diseases are associated with salt deprivation.”

      “…..But none of the many studies into salt has justified the generalized leap that some make in assuming a harmful health effect — none has ever shown, for example, that salt consumption increases overall death rates, or death rates from cardiovascular diseases, or from heart attack or from any other cause.

       On the other hand, studies do point to increased risk of heart attack and higher death rates among some individuals on low-salt diets. As explained in Reducing dietary sodium: the case for caution, an article published earlier this year in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, only one controlled trial of low-salt diets has taken place and it demonstrated worse outcomes. Other studies are split, with most showing no health benefit of reducing dietary salt. Populations that may be especially vulnerable to lowsalt diets include the elderly and the pregnant.

      Lowering salt levels across the board when every individual responds differently to the salt in his systems, is foolhardy, explains the JAMA author, Dr. Michael Alderman, former president of the International Society of Hypertension and current editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Hypertension. “Multiple randomized clinical trials have established that reduction of sodium intake sufficient to lower blood pressure also increases sympathetic nerve activity, decreases insulin sensitivity, activates the renin angiotensin system, and stimulates aldosterone secretion.” The health effects of sodium reduction, he concludes, will only be beneficial if reducing our intake of sodium kills fewer people than it saves, something that no one can say with any confidence.

     Rather than letting low-salt advocates run wild with their hunches and impose an unproven and potentially disastrous salt policy on the population at large, Dr. Alderman proposes that we first study who would benefit from, and who would be harmed by, a low-salt diet. “An alternate, more cautious approach, calls for rigorous, large-scale, population-based randomized clinical trials,” he states. “These trials will likely demand a commitment by thousands of individuals for several years but will result in greater precision and scientific credibility to help answer the question — and vastly smaller risk of human and material resources.”

      Dr. Alderman is far from alone in fearing the consequences of forcing dietary changes on us. The late Dr. Lawrence M. Resnick, executive editor of the American Journal of Hypertension and a professor at Cornell Medical College, several years ago resigned from a government panel that he believed was cooking the books on low-salt science, whose conclusions he called “nonsense.” And last October, a University of California study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology warned that the salt-restriction advocates were playing with fire while addressing a non-problem.

     “To attempt to use public policy to abrogate human physiology would be futile and possibly harmful to human health,” the study states.

     Humans have evolved highly complex systems to maintain our body salt levels within a certain range and we can no more give up our craving for salt than we can our craving for oxygen. When the body becomes salt-deprived, the authors explain, our body’s defence systems will kick in to protect us from harm. In the words of the authors, “The complexity and sophistication of the central control of sodium appetite offers compelling support for the proposition that vertebrates evolved a mechanism to assure that their physiologic needs for sodium are defended when dietary access to it is limited or when excessive amounts of sodium are lost under conditions of stress such as hemorrhage, sweating or diarrheal illness.”

      Of particular alarm to the authors is the government’s recommended target for our sodium intake. Its current guidelines call for a maximum daily intake of 2,300 mg of sodium, the equivalent of one teaspoon of table salt, a level outside the normal human experience: 17% lower than the lowest level of worldwide sodium intake and 38% lower than the worldwide average sodium intake.

      The author’s conclusion — the government targets are an unattainable and thus a financially wasteful goal because humans could not stand to have their sodium needs unmet. Another conclusion: To the extent governments succeed in depriving the body of the salt it needs, the human condition will worsen, particularly for those especially vulnerable to salt deprivation.

Lawrence Solomon “

    The myth is more enduring that the fact.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies