Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Maybe I Will Become a Socialist

Probably not, but the impending divorce of Jamie and Frank McCourt (co-owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers) gives one pause for thought.  Here are some of her requests of him, to help her "maintain" her lifestyle:
  • Paid Business dinners and lunches, 5 days a week
  • Unlimited travel expenses
  • 24 hour security
  • Oh yeah - flowers at her desk
  • I'm guessing at least one residence, because they own "tens of millions of dollars worth of residential real estate in the U.S. and Mexico"
Now, in addition to these "perks" of food, shelter, and luxury travel, she also wants alimony.  The news reports differ, but the minimum number is around $330,000, and I've seen numbers close to half a million.  Not a year.  A month.  She expects as much money in a month as many Americans earn in around 10 years

Now, don't pick completely on her.  If she wants this, you can imagine what he has or makes.  Most reports claim that their net worth is about 1.2 billion, though most of that is from the estimated value of the Dodgers..

The court papers are fairly damning as to their extravagant lifestyle, apparently paid for by the Dodgers.  Geez, one would think if you were worth 1.2 Billion you could pay for some things yourself.
"Travel. Frank and I travel frequently, both for personal and business reasons. Everything is always first class." .... "When we fly, we usually fly on private planes, typically a Gulfstream-IV, through Net Jets paid by the Dodgers." ... "We always stay in suites when available at the nicest of accommodations, such as The Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons Hotels. It is not uncommon for us to spend $1,000 or more per night at hotels." ... "It was not uncommon for the two of us to spend $400 on dinner when dining out together."
An NBC Sports Blog writes:
"...based on Jamie McCourt's description of the Dodgers' owners' lifestyle -- constant private jet travel at $12K an hour, hotel rooms which never cost under $1000 a night,  six dinners out a week at $400+ a pop, etc. etc. -- I'm going to get medieval on anyone who suggests the players are the greedy ones who make too much money to play a kid's game."
 On the bright side, the LA Times has obtained a copy of some of her court papers, and she does (claim) to give about $31,000 a month to charities.  Here are some more court papers.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

President Obama seems to be weak on "Human Rights"

For the first time since 1991, the American President will not meet with the Dalai Lama.
"Obama has tossed aside Carter's "human rights-first" policy as much as he has George W. Bush's "freedom agenda." The Dalai Lama is more than just a religious leader: He embodies the struggle for universal human rights and religious freedom for millions."
And now the State Department it cutting off funding to some organizations that support democracy in Iran.  The Boston Globe reports on the specific case of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.

The US has always had a somewhat schizophrenic foreign policy, alternating between "realistic" and "idealistic".  Looks like, for 2009, we are "realistic".  Lets see how that works.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Baseball Playoff Continue to Prove that Payroll Matters

In a previous post, I showed how the teams making the playoffs were, with 2 exceptions, in the upper half of the payroll scale.  In other words, 75% were in the upper half.  Congratulations to the Twins and the Rockies for making the playoffs with below average payrolls.  But, they both lost in the first round.  In fact, in the first round, the higher payroll team won 3 out of 4 series.   The only exception was Angels / Red Sox, and that's not a huge disparity in payroll, that's #6 defeating #4, with less than a 9 million difference in payroll.

In the Championship Series, the remaining teams have the #1 payroll, plus the 6th, 7th, and 9th.  If both Championship Series finish with the current leaders, that means that the higher payroll team will have won 5 out of 6 of the playoffs.  If we disqualify the Cubs and Mets for bad luck and incompetence, which we should, the two highest payroll teams in each league will make the World Series.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Marginal Tax concerns about Health Care Plans

Coming mainly from Greg Mankiw's blog, and he's an admitted conservative, but there are a couple of articles, with supporting numbers, about the Baucus health car plan's effect on marginal tax rates.  The plan includes subsidies for lower income participants, to help cover their insurance costs.  Probably well intentioned, and sure to appeal to a lot of voters in those income ranges.  However, these subsidies phase out as you get above the poverty line, creating a effective "marginal tax" rate.  If you earn a dollar more, you don't get to keep it all, because you are losing part of the subsidy.

One article calculates the marginal tax rate for these subsidies at 23 to 24%.  The CBO essentially agrees:
"In that case, marginal tax rates would go up by about 22 percentage points for all families whose income was between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level."
Note - the CBO estimates poverty level when these laws take place will be roughly $23,000.  So this marginal tax will affect all Americans making between $23,000 and $92,000, which is the vast majority of Americans.

In an earlier post, Mankiw links to this article in New Atlantis, where James Capretta comes up with a higher estimate of 30% for the Baucus marginal tax.  The math is a little different because he only considers families making 100 to 200 percent of the poverty level.  He then looks at other taxes on people in this income range.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is reduced by $0.21 for every additional $1 earned - an effective 21% marginal tax..
The individual income tax rate is 15 percent.  (Though most of this is covered by deductions at this low income, so I'm skeptical whether to count this)
Payroll taxes are 7.65 percent.  And, one would argue that this tax should be doubled.  Even though the company "pays" half, in reality, this money doesn't grow on trees, it comes from wages.

So, an optimist who completely discounts the Federal Income tax for these wage earners, and only counts FICA once, and counts the health care marginal tax at the lowest number, 22%, still comes up with a marginal tax rate of 50%.  Pretty high.  The "health care tax" roughly doubles the marginal tax rate.

A pessimist who counts all the taxes, including Federal Income Tax, and uses Capretta's slightly higher 30% number for health care, computes a marginal tax rate of over 80%.

The truth is undoubtedly somewhere in between.  These calculations do not count State and Local Taxes.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Banned Book Week is Over, now it's Banned Speech Incident

Our local paper reports on a recent incident, where a mixed-race child was taunted by a another group of teenagers at a skate park.  The taunters (allegedly) shouted "white power" and waved a Confederate flag.  The incident is being investigated as a possible felony "hate crime".

This doesn't fit my understanding of a hate crime, nor Wikipedia's, which states:

""Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts which are seen to have been motivated by hatred of one or more of the listed conditions."

because no criminal act occurred. Unless the article is missing something, there is no allegation of violence, theft, bullying, or whatever.  Even a claim of "intimidation" seems dubious, as the alleged victim enjoyed the skate park for hours.  It seems that only the mother, who was not a direct target of the taunts, was offended.  And nothing sounds even remotely like a felony.

Now, I don't like what the taunters did, but, whether I like it or not does not matter.  It isn't illegal to shout "white power" or wave a Confederate flag, in fact, that's Freedom of Speech.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (widely attributed to Voltaire but this is apparently wrong)

"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen."  ~Tommy Smothers

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Baseball Team Payrolls for 2009, and who's in the playoffs

Here's a link to a handy table of MLB 2009 opening-day team payrolls.  And here is the data:  (The first number is total salary, the second is average per player)

Yankees
$201,449,289
$7,748,050




Mets
$135,773,988
$4,849,071




Cubs
$135,050,000
$5,402,000




Red Sox
$122,696,000
$4,089,867




Tigers
$115,085,145
$4,110,184




Angels
$113,709,000
$4,061,036




Phillies
$113,004,048
$4,185,335




Astros
$102,996,415
$3,814,682




Dodgers
$100,458,101
$4,018,324




Mariners
$98,904,167
$3,532,292




Braves
$96,726,167
$3,335,385




White Sox
$96,068,500
$3,694,942




Cardinals
$88,528,411
$3,278,830




Giants
$82,161,450
$3,043,017




Indians
$81,625,567
$3,023,169




Blue Jays
$80,993,657
$2,892,631




Brewers
$79,857,502
$3,194,300




Rockies
$75,201,000
$2,785,222




D-backs
$73,571,667
$2,724,877




Reds
$70,968,500
$2,957,021




Royals
$70,908,333
$2,727,244




Rangers
$68,646,023
$2,367,104




Orioles
$67,101,667
$2,580,833




Twins
$65,299,267
$2,251,699




Rays
$63,313,035
$2,183,208




Athletics
$62,310,000
$2,225,357




Nationals
$59,328,000
$2,045,793




Pirates
$48,743,000
$1,874,731




Padres
$42,796,700
$1,528,454




Marlins
$36,814,000
$1,314,786


I highlighted in bold all the teams that will make the playoffs.  (Note - Twins vs. Tigers are still competing for a playoff spot at this time).  Other than the Rockies and possibly the Twins, all the playoff teams are in the upper half of payroll.  Hardly a surprise.  Thanks to the incompetent Mets and Cubs, many will say "but this shows you can't buy your way into the post-season".  True.  A large payroll is does not guarantee entrance to the playoffs.  But it is still required.  In other words, a small payroll pretty much guarantees failure.

I could correlate payroll with wins, but no need, somebody has already done that.  Here's a nice chart based on data from 2006-2008.  It shows a clear correlation between wins and payroll.  Teams significantly below the line are more "efficient", in that they get more wins per dollar.  As you'd expect, the As, Twins, Marlins and Rays are there. 





Anyway, this proves that money  largely buys success in MLB.   With exceptions to "prove the rule", a payroll of roughly $90 Million looks like the minimum to get to the playoffs.  Note that the three teams that missed the playoffs but were "in the race" in September were the Giants, Braves, and Rangers, whose average payroll is about $82 Million.  This is another data point - looks like to be "playing meaningful games" in September requires about $80 Million.

Not sure how to fix this.  Some owners are just plain cheap.  Part of me admires the Steinbrenners for their willingness to spend money to win.  But most of me hates them.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Here's a list of those who support Polanski - boycott them

What Polanski did was despicable and he deserves punishment.  Especially since he has shown no remorse.  Yet many call for his release. Here's an article about the petition by misguided movie stars to win his release.  And here's a list of the signatories, as of Sept 29 2009.

I strongly suggest that you boycott movies produced by, written by, directed by, or featuring these "artists".  Unfortunately, based on the length of the list, that may mean no movies for a long time.  Most of the names I don't recognize, but here are some I do (or that sound familiar):

Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Darren Aronofsky, Monica Bellucci, Lionel Cassan, Penelope Cruz, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Jonathan Demme, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Antoine Silber, Tilda Swinton, Tom Tykwer, Wim Wenders, Harvey Weinstein.

Luckily for me, I don't see the Coen brothers,  Luc Besson, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, or Clint Eastwood.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

It's Banned Books Week

Sept 26 - Oct 3 is Banned Books Week.  (Also here)  Now, I'm against banning books.  But, if you look at the details, the good news is that books aren't getting banned.

The ALA provides details.

A "challenge" is an attempt by somebody to get a book removed, usually from a school class or library.  Since 1995, there has been a slow decline in the number of challenges.  The primary reason for challenges are concerns about Sex and Language, shown below.



The targets of the complaints are, overwhelmingly, schools and public libraries - see below:



And the actual complainant is, overwhelmingly, a parent.  Organized pressure groups, government, and religions groups are a very small fraction of the complainants.



So, parents are complaining about books in schools - or, in a positive light, taking an interest in their children's education.  Is there a problem?  Here is a PDF report of challenges in 2007-2008.  Thanks to the miracle of computers, you can search on terms like "banned".

One book was "banned", Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy.

One book was "restricted", Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice on Her Way.

I counted about a dozen actual book removals.  This doesn't count a Catholic school removing the Harry Potter books because of their themes of witchcraft.  While I think this was a silly decision on their part, it's a private, religious school and its their right to remove books they feel inappropriate to their religion.

Notably, other than one outright theft from a public library, all the bannings, restrictions, and removals were from schools, not from public libraries.

Here is a list of the ten most challenged books.  I looked into details of two, chosen vaguely at random.

Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar, deals with "the lives and romances amongst the privileged teenagers" and is now a CW TV series.  Here's selected lines from the wikipedia synopsis of the first book.

"Teenager Blair Waldorf sneaks away from a party at a friend's house to have sex with her boyfriend Nate Archibald ...  She is also unhappy to learn that Nate and Serena had sex the summer before Serena left"

Naomi Wolf, hardly a conservative religious fanatic, writes that "sex saturates the Gossip Girl books".  And shouldn't we be trying to have kids read literature?  In my high school, not only did we walk through snow uphill both ways, but we read books like Grapes of Wrath, while my teacher pontificated on the genius of Thomas Hardy.  Today kids read trashy CW sitcoms?


The TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R series, by Lauren Myracle.  ttyl "gained attention for being the first-ever novel written entirely in the style of instant messaging conversation."  It has "frank and mature content".  Now, I'm not sure about the content, but should we be teaching students to read English, or IM?


In conclusion, the anti-book-banning people have done a great job.  (The WSJ comes up with somewhat different statistics than I did, but the same conclusion)   Books are not getting banned, and even the ALA admits it: "most of the books featured during [Banned Books Week] were not banned."  Frankly, the books drawing criticism from parents concerned about their children's education seem to deserve it.