I wanted an ADBOC answer to the HBD question. Lacking that, I answered the question about the belief (regardless of whether I endorse policies that people with the same belief typically endorse—like I did for the AGW question), but given that (unlike the AGW question) it was in the politics section and that it mentioned a movement, I felt a bit uncomfortable doing that. Also, I interpreted “we” in the Great Stagnation question as “American”, given that that’s what the cited Wikipedia article says.
In the income question I only counted my PhD scholarship after taxes, and not the “reimbursement” of travel expenses (which often exceed the amount I actually spend while travelling) nor the private tutoring I’ve very occasionally done (I kind-of consider the money a gift in exchange of a favour).
In the Living With question, what’s the point of the “most of the time”? These days I probably spend more time at my girlfriends’ than at my own place (though neither makes up the absolute majority of hours in an average week), but I wouldn’t consider myself to be living in the former because I don’t have the keys to that place, don’t pay the rent there, don’t do homework there (other than setting and clearing the table when I eat there), and don’t spend any nontrivial amount of time without my girlfriend there. So I answered “With roommates” (where I do do all of those things), but given the “most of the time” I’m not sure that was what I was supposed to answer.
“Are you planning on having more children? Answer yes if you don’t have children but want some”—we want some children some day, but we’re not planning on having children now. (I’m not even sure how I answered anymore.)
There’s no such thing as a minimum wage law in my country. Rather than spending time trying to figure out what the answers should be supposed to mean in this situation, I just skipped the question.
“How would you describe your opinion of social justice, as you understand the term? See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice”—as I understand the term before or after reading the lede of that WP article? On reading it, I realized there’s a mostly kind-of sort-of sane mainstream social justice movement that social justice warriors on Tumblr and the like aren’t representative of any more than the likes of Dworkin and Daly are of kind-of sort-of sane mainstream feminism, so I answered 4/5 -- but would have probably answered somewhere around 2/5 hadn’t I seen that WP article.
Also, in the taxes question, I think that the tax revenue is too low in my country, but the tax rates are about right or even slight too high—it’s tax evasion which is way too big (and I’m not sure how I’d go about reducing that). I averaged my answer answer if the question had been about tax revenues and my answer if it had been about tax rates, weighed by my probability assignments for each meaning, and picked the middle answer.
From what I hear, your country is in a vicious cycle where high tax rates encourage tax evasion so the government raises taxes (and creates new taxes) to compensate which further encourages tax evasion.
Yes, that’s essentially correct (now that we have technocratic governments; before that, no politician dared raise taxes or reduce public spending (because either would be unpopular) sending the public debt up towards infinity).
I wanted an ADBOC answer to the HBD question. Lacking that, I answered the question about the belief (regardless of whether I endorse policies that people with the same belief typically endorse—like I did for the AGW question), but given that (unlike the AGW question) it was in the politics section and that it mentioned a movement, I felt a bit uncomfortable doing that. Also, I interpreted “we” in the Great Stagnation question as “American”, given that that’s what the cited Wikipedia article says.
In the income question I only counted my PhD scholarship after taxes, and not the “reimbursement” of travel expenses (which often exceed the amount I actually spend while travelling) nor the private tutoring I’ve very occasionally done (I kind-of consider the money a gift in exchange of a favour).
I rounded my top-level contributions to Main and Discussion down to zero.
In the US, at least, this would be taxable income. (I find this amusing in the context of the sibling comment about tax evasion being a problem.)
Other comments to my answers:
In the Living With question, what’s the point of the “most of the time”? These days I probably spend more time at my girlfriends’ than at my own place (though neither makes up the absolute majority of hours in an average week), but I wouldn’t consider myself to be living in the former because I don’t have the keys to that place, don’t pay the rent there, don’t do homework there (other than setting and clearing the table when I eat there), and don’t spend any nontrivial amount of time without my girlfriend there. So I answered “With roommates” (where I do do all of those things), but given the “most of the time” I’m not sure that was what I was supposed to answer.
“Are you planning on having more children? Answer yes if you don’t have children but want some”—we want some children some day, but we’re not planning on having children now. (I’m not even sure how I answered anymore.)
There’s no such thing as a minimum wage law in my country. Rather than spending time trying to figure out what the answers should be supposed to mean in this situation, I just skipped the question.
“How would you describe your opinion of social justice, as you understand the term? See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice”—as I understand the term before or after reading the lede of that WP article? On reading it, I realized there’s a mostly kind-of sort-of sane mainstream social justice movement that social justice warriors on Tumblr and the like aren’t representative of any more than the likes of Dworkin and Daly are of kind-of sort-of sane mainstream feminism, so I answered 4/5 -- but would have probably answered somewhere around 2/5 hadn’t I seen that WP article.
Also, in the taxes question, I think that the tax revenue is too low in my country, but the tax rates are about right or even slight too high—it’s tax evasion which is way too big (and I’m not sure how I’d go about reducing that). I averaged my answer answer if the question had been about tax revenues and my answer if it had been about tax rates, weighed by my probability assignments for each meaning, and picked the middle answer.
From what I hear, your country is in a vicious cycle where high tax rates encourage tax evasion so the government raises taxes (and creates new taxes) to compensate which further encourages tax evasion.
Yes, that’s essentially correct (now that we have technocratic governments; before that, no politician dared raise taxes or reduce public spending (because either would be unpopular) sending the public debt up towards infinity).