Interesting Links for 2-10-2011

[andrewducker]

• The Value of Human Life
  (tags: economic philosophy funny comic)


• Poisoned nectar can reduce the mosquito population by 90%
  (tags: mosquito poison)


• What the implicit association test tells us about our attitudes to race.
  (tags: racism psychology society)


• Porn-watching, net-savvy kids are a myth. Well, less common than The Mail makes out...
  (tags: porn internet children)


• Music Piracy Continues to Decline Thanks to Spotify
  (tags: music spotify piracy copyright sweden)


• European financial tax not a good idea, says Sweden (which tried it, and then repealed it)
  (tags: tax europe finance sweden investment)

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm usually all in favour of taxing banks and investment houses, but a punitive tax on Euro based companies only will simply see them all shift to China and Hong Kong. Or New York. Or anywhere but here.

[skington.livejournal.com]

And that's a bad thing how?

Banks are pretty much responsible for the last world recession, and overly-rich traders in the City of London are partly responsible for the ridiculous level of London property prices. Who needs them?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Because them paying some tax is better than them paying no tax at all.

Although, it does make me think of things like this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/18/barclays-bank-113m-corporation-tax

Where Barclays got away with paying just 113m in tax in 2009. And I'm quite certain the rest of the banks are pretty damned good at evading tax too.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

A mass exodus is less likely if the tax is structured as a stamp duty.

This is a cunning wheeze that really boosts compliance with a tax regime. You start with a group of assets whose ownership is subject to the laws of a particular jurisdiction - say, for instance, property in England and Wales (Stamp Duty Land Tax exists at the moment for this), or shares in Belgian companies (the proposed financial transaction tax might cover this). Then the government says we will treat ownership transfers of this set of assets as legally valid if and only if the transfer was registered with us and the appropriate fee (the stamp duty) paid.

(The name arises because in the days of paper documents, the deed of transfer was only valid if stamped by the government, which you had to pay the stamp duty to get.)

You then can't purchase the asset and avoid the tax without seriously risking your title to that asset being ruled invalid. It's entirely immaterial where the purchaser is based.

There is an argument that a stamp duty like this might be much more easily be evaded in the case of Belgian companies than English-and-Welsh property, on the grounds that it is considerably more practical to move an organisation than to move land.

That's true, but not the end of the story. It's entirely possible to introduce a stamp duty on the purchase of shares and for the jurisdiction where that applies to see a long-term increase in the number of companies listing there. In fact there exists a stamp duty on shares in the UK (Stamp Duty Reserve Tax), which is paid by anyone buying shares in UK companies, whether they're UK citizens or not. (From memory some substantial proportion of this tax is in fact paid by foreigners.)

So if structured carefully it's far from a foregone conclusion that business will simply shift elsewhere to avoid the tax.

(Admittedly derivatives are potentially trickier, though, although in these days of rampant fear about counterparty risk it's less likely that traders will desert official exchanges en masse for new alternatives, especially if the tax isn't vast. And there's an argument that the socially-useful function of derivatives (mainly hedging for the risk-averse) are not so relocatable.)

[andrewducker]

Of course there are exceptions to stamp duty - such as for market makers at large banks. I strongly suspect that most HFT occurs through these, as it would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

I think all transfers between nominee accounts of the same beneficial owner, or between a nominee and beneficial owner, are (currently!) exempt from stamp duty. So market makers could simply do (most of) their fast trades within and between nominee accounts. They'd probably be wanting to do that for all sorts of other reasons of efficiency anyway. (NB I'm deducing in these last two sentences, rather than speaking from knowledge of the situation as it is.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Have they checked on whether bees eat the poisoned fruit juice?

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

That would be my concern, bees and hummingbirds. But I'm all for trying it.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Hummingbirds are probably safe-- they specialize in narrow-throated flowers.

However, while the article says "Spinosad, a bacterial insecticide considered harmless to humans and most beneficial insects", here's what wikipedia says: "it is highly toxic to bees (honey bee LC50 = 11.5 ppm) and is highly toxic to oysters and other marine mollusks. Applications to areas where bees are actively foraging should be avoided. After the residues have dried, it is much less toxic to bees."

So maybe it's okay if it's sprayed on branches at night and allowed to dry before the bees are out or somesuch.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Since my storm drains empty into Galveston Bay, I probably shouldn't use it.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You might want to find someone who can give a sensible look at whether the quantity you'd use (maybe plus the quantities other people are likely to use) would make a difference.

Also, the risk is from Spinosad. Boric acid seems to be okay for marine invertebrates.

[fearmeforiampink]

The first thing they talk about, the pesticide, apparently kills pests without killing 'good' insects, so that's a possible solution. I'd imagine that isn't the case of the acid they talk about later.

Possibly they could make something where it's sized so Mosquitoes can get in, but other stuff can't…

[andrewducker]

I like that last suggestion a lot!

[andrewducker]

"Boric acid is practically nontoxic to birds, fish, aquatic invertebrates, and relatively nontoxic to beneficial insects."

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidefactsheets/leasttoxic/boricacid_borates_borax.htm

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

"Often the view of how children behave online is out of date and needs updating – that's why we included the list of top 10 myths in our report. For example, while parents worry more about 'stranger danger', children find cyberbullying the most upsetting risk," said Professor Sonia Livingstone, who led the project.

This is laughable, not because of what it says, but because "stranger danger" has been an overexaggerated myth for a very long time, away from the internet. That's not where the danger is, statistically.

Also, if I was a kid, I'd certainly have lied on that kind of poll!