Talk:Hauser's law

Untitled

A new editorial by avid Ranson was published on May 17, 2010 in the WSJ opinion section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.28.64.176 (talk) 00:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

How can the tax revenue always be at 19.5% when according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP the current tax revenue is 28%? One of the pages is incorrect. Or at least the guy who wrote the article is a liar, in which case that should also be noted.

This entire article should be removed. This is not an accepted "law" in economics - it is one article in the Wall Street Journal that doesn't make much sense. Here is a brief summary of the problems:

1. Total taxes as a percentage of GDP HAVE fluctuated - they have been as low as 16% and as high as 20%. That is a huge spread. Source: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1324 2. More importantly, the citation of the TOP tax rate is misleading, and a useless statistic, for a couple reasons. Start with 1951 - the 91% rate applied to incomes above $400,000. $400,000 is $3.3 million in 2010 dollars. http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php There isn't any reason to believe that the tax rate on incomes above $3.3 million will be a significant driver of tax revenues. Additionally, and even more importantly, there is no consideration of other changes to the tax code that could offset the gain. In other words, there is no evidence this is a "law," as opposed to a conscious policy or random result. In sum, the "law" says that extremely high marginal rates on incomes (to use the 1950s) above $3.3 million did not result, historically, by themselves, in a perceptible increase in tax revenues as a percentage of GDP. Of course, there is no reason to suspect that there would be any direct corelation. It is a complete misuse of the term "law." This isn't a "law" taught in economics textbooks, which has be subjected to any empirical analysis, or is discussed anywhere other than in a couple of WSJ articles. It isn't worthy of an entry. ````DRM1962 —Preceding unsigned comment added by DRM1962 (talk • contribs) 15:08, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Biographical info' re W.K. Hauser

Some biographical information about William Kurt Hauser (especially his first name) is available here: http://www.whv.com/default.asp?pageid=people_seniorexecutives&empid=2 .

Further biographical information is available on page 34 of his book, Taxation and Economic Performance (1996): http://books.google.com/books?id=X7zLmIK1HgEC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&source=bl&ots=Gwf7jYeZuW&sig=CtnjqypR-4p8khgse_profgnE_o&hl=en&ei=2lX6S7LeNamFlgerxq3LCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CEIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false .Cwkmail (talk) 10:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Hauser's law doesn't match facts

Hauser gave as his support a vague graph. When actual numbers are used from U.S. government budget comparison of receipts to GDP, the results are quite different than Hauser stated. The link is a text file from which one can easily compute averages for any period. The average for 1946-1993, the years Hauser referred to, is actually 17.7%, quite different than 19.5%. From 1946 until 1993, there were, in fact, only two years that it reached 19.5%. Hauser was just wrong. Whether he was ill informed or lied, only he knows.

I have modified this article and Income tax in the United States to reflect his inaccuracy. I would argue that adding up some public numbers is not original research, just fact checking. Oldtaxguy (talk) 19:54, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Your link leads me to a 404 non-page. Sugar-Baby-Love (talk) 05:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem with saying that he "lied" is that the Law was never (to my knowledge) stated in absolute terms. He's always referred to the average as around/about/approximately/etc to 19.5%, and he's also used more vague terms such as 'slightly below four fifths'. And the years that he has used in his time frame has also changed. In Taxation and economic performance, which we currently already cite, he uses 1960-1992 as his benchmark.

In both senses, we have vagueness. A more technical and less colloquial re-statement of his argument might be: Tax receipts in the U.S. have been between the range of 14% to 21% from 1946, the first fiscal year post-WWII, to now where now is some kind of pre-late-2000s-recession date. Similar thing, essentially. Sugar-Baby-Love (talk) 05:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I repleaced the link with the current year edition (which appears to agree with the prior one) in Excel. The average from 1960-1992 is 18.0, still not Hauser's 19.5. The number has exceeded 19.5 in only 5 of the last 65 years, above 20 only once, and never hit 21%. Hauser's statements of 19.5 vs. 18 imply that the number is above 19, which is false. His statement that it has stayed "about" a particular 3 digit number, when the variation is 5% of GDP, is also clearly false. Regardless of his motives, his statements were false; I have problems with quoting that which is demonstrably false. Oldtaxguy (talk) 16:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Hauser's chart was false: it does not match facts in OMB data. Hauser's statements of data in his article were also false. Check the copy of Hauser's article linked in note 3. I'm amazed there continues to be debate about the theoretical merits of something that demonstrably does not fit facts. Oldtaxguy (talk) 15:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Kimel

Kimel's entire argument is based on this chart: here

As one can see, his opinion (and it's an opinion, not a statement of fact) is highly questionable for many reasons:

• He considers the entire period from 1991 to 2001 to be a "tax hike era", despite the fact that some taxes were cut then.
• He also describes 1969-1991 as a "tax cut era", again an extremely broad over-generalization that ignores all varieties of changes made in the tax law over that period.
• From 1951 to 1953, Kimel's own graph shows that a "tax hike era" had lower revenues-- the exact opposite of his main point that he makes!

All in all, he makes a reasonable argument. But it's a mere argument, not a statement of fact. To call it a statement of fact when his own graph contradicts what he says is ludicrous. ItCanHappen (talk) 04:43, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

And besides that is the fact that both Hauser himself and other people dispute Kimel's argument-- so pretending as if Kimel's argument is fact NPOV. ItCanHappen (talk) 04:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Moved the page: most sources capitalize this name

See [1]. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

They do not. Your brief report of that search does not stand up in some cases (see the actual text of the hits). I have reverted the move. This is in any case a matter of Wikipedia's style choices. Please use the RM mechanism, rather than unilaterally moving because of your opinions concerning capitalisation, which as you know are not founded on consensus. Noetica^Tea? 00:10, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Noetica about sources, in any case Wikipedia style choice is to not capitalize unless it is a proper name. LK (talk) 07:36, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

What? Noetica, how the heck do you reach the conclusion that most sources don't capitalize. There are 4 valid hits, 3 capitalize and 1 uses both capitalized and uncapitalized. How is that not "most".

1. [2] "[p 214] what is now known as "hauser's Law" because of its inviolate nature. (...) has printed a simple chart depicting Hauser's Law (...)"
2. [3] "[p 40] The laffer curve theory and Hauser's law give (...) The Laffer theory says (...) The Hauser's Law states (...)"
3. [4]"[p 172] "Hauser's Law offers additional insights (...)"
4. [5] only appears in the title of a WSJ article
5. [6] no preview, probably the same false positive as below
6. [7] "[p 7] Hauser's billion population theory will no doubt become known as Hauser's Law, (...)"
7. [8] unsure, can only preview the article title
8. [9] no preview written decades before the law was enunciated
9. [10] no preview false positive, published 1 year before the law was enunciated
10. [11] false positive

And the Wall Street Journal cited by #4 also capitalizes it: Wall Street Journal "A wit latter dubbed this "hauser's Law"".

And if you look at google news[12], you will find that it's always capitalized in all news articles. Not just the Wall Street Journal, but also the New York Times[13] and Forbes[14][15]. Every uncapitalized instance is a false positive. The only exception is a Polish newspaper quoting an English language blog[16].

And google scholar[17] shows only one hit for me, which is capitalized[18].

I think this qualifies as "most sources". --Enric Naval (talk) 09:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

It's hard to know for sure what "most" do, but even "most" is not nearly good enough to conclude it's a proper name. It should be "almost all" for that. There's really no general disagreement in sources that "X's law" should be lower case on the law. Sure people tend to capitalize their made-up and funny laws that they try to use to impress. That's not something we should follow. Dicklyon (talk) 11:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, in this case "almost all" also applies, doesn't it? --Enric Naval (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Enric, you ask: "how the heck do you reach the conclusion that most sources don't capitalize?" But I did not say that they don't. I said: "Your brief report of that search does not stand up in some cases (see the actual text of the hits)." Your brief report was simply to show us the raw, unanalysed results page. That is not good enough. When challenged, you admit it: "There are 4 valid hits, 3 capitalize and 1 uses both capitalized and uncapitalized." You then ask: "How is that not 'most'?" The simple answer: 3 out of the 10 hits that your search reported is not "most".

In short, the evidence – even supplemented by picking and choosing as you do, and by one hit on Googlescholar – is ridiculously scanty. It is absurd to base a move on that evidence, especially when:

1. The move would be counter to WP:MOSCAPS (and that is the applicable Wikipedia resource for deciding a case like this).
2. The great majority of titles of the form "X's law" have "law" uncapitalised (and WP:TITLE has this as the fifth of five major principles: "Titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles are generally preferred").
3. Major external authorities support lower case: OED (almost always in its definitions, and supported by most citations); New Hart's Rules (current edition); CMOS (current edition).
4. The campaign to track particular usages in "reliable sources" (including newspapers, hardly apt for an encyclopedia) can do nothing but undermine Wikipedia's consistency and integrity as a high-quality encyclopedia, and waste days of editors' time – time that can be better spent improving content, rather than quibbling against established style in the Project. Wikipedia style is determined by Wikipedia, not by the vagaries of scattered sources.

Enric: Why would we have style guidelines at all, if they are to be routinely ignored?
That is not a rhetorical question. It would be great to see your articulated response, for a change. Answer it here – or preferably at WT:MOS or WT:TITLE, where these things are properly dealt with. I'm not alone in wanting the reasons for this constant disruption laid out for scrutiny.

Noetica^Tea? 01:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

("3 out of the 10 hits" That is a terribly misleading misrepresentation of the results, dumping together false positives, sources that can't be verified, sources that give mixed results and sources where the words only appear in a title. Twisting the results to support your favoured conclusion. Didn't we already have this same discussion in Talk:Halley's_Comet#Requested_move? Allow me to reword that. In my opinion, your interpretation of these search results is totally out of touch with any common sense interpretation. Sources that can't be verified are not counted "for" or "against" any of the positions, since we don't really know which one they use. False positives are of course discounted. And I found two additional false positives.)

I suppose that changing the guidelines is the only solution. And, no, don't worry, I don't want to capitalize all "X's law". I am now aware that English downcases physics laws and theorems, probably all scientific laws in general. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Enric, it seems that nothing will stop you misattributing statements and opinions to those you disagree with. It is not as you report above, either with or without your amendment. I have consistently sought to show that your original bare claim was ill-founded: "most sources capitalize this name". You have not given firm evidence for that, since there are so few sources available for checking on the web. That is just one more excellent reason for following Wikipedia's guidelines, instead of chasing divergent usages in ephemeral media. As you say, "changing the guidelines is the only solution": if there is a problem to solve here, which is not at all established. I am glad you are "now aware that English downcases physics laws and theorems, probably all scientific laws in general". Please keep that up. There have been too many time-wasting RMs and unilateral moves lately, based on ignorance of common practice and scant attention to Wikipedia's style guidelines. Noetica^Tea? 02:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The point being that the uses are not divergent, but overwhelmingly in favor of capitalizing. The point being that certain types of laws appear to be mostly capitalized in sources, as I pointed out in Talk:Murphy's_law#Requested_move, a place where you commented half and a hour before commenting here. Or using the argument that most "law" articles in wikipedia are downcased, when you know that some editors have been recently downcasing those articles to impose consistency in a certain direction. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Enric, I'm just not seeing what you hope to achieve. You ignore my points, and then baldly state that "the point" is something else. So what if I did comment at Talk:Murphy's_law#Requested_move? You ignore, as always, the rationale that I articulate there. And yes, I know that editors have been removing capitals in article titles. In conformity with WP:MOSCAPS. So what? I have sought to understand why you are against such respect for Wikipedian style guidelines. I would prefer you to take any broad issue you have with them to the relevant talkpages for systematic discussion. Let's stop now; we are not getting anywhere. Noetica^Tea? 02:15, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Advertising disguised as constructive

I have re-deleted an otherwise unsourced edit citing a political lobbying website. Citation is advertising. For confirmation, just look at the cite I deleted. The edit by an anonymous IP editor was OR not even supported by the citation. Oldtaxguy (talk) 20:52, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

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