During our recent blargument Marco wrote:

Facts say what the speaker wants them to (like statistics).

I responded:

This is an abuse of the word “fact” (and “statistic”). I know that your idea of what’s “fact” and mine do not necessarily like up exactly, but there’s no sense in trying to make “fact” mean “objective” and instead make it “subjective”.

We already have a word for that: “opinion”.

I might like to *say* that my opinions are facts, but that doesn’t make it any more true than if I say my car is a Ferrari. It may or may not be, but it would be silly to take my word for it without some sort of evidence (a peek in my garage, my vehicle registration, or perhaps a look at my bank account).

Persuasive arguments are not always false or misleading, but I am at a disadvantage if I take persuader’s word for it that his statements are true (ie: are facts). I need to take other information into account. Part of that may be experience (how accurate has he been in the past, is he drawing reasonable conclusions based on the evidence he’s presented), but outside evidence and/or well-reasoned counterarguments are even more reliable.

(I’ve added the emphasis in my reposting here.)

A week ago the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a study about corporations (both US-based and foreign-controlled) and the taxes they pay. It was factual, apparently objective, and probably accurate (I don’t know how well the GAO does their job, but for the purposes of this argument I’ll assume it’s correct). It specifically did not draw any conclusions from the facts that it presented.

The news media took the report and wrote hundreds of stories on it. Many (most?) of them had the theme “Corporations use tax loopholes to pay less than their ‘fair share’”., lead by the Associated Press who claimed that two-thirds paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. Even my favorite business news source, APM Marketplace, did a bit about big evil pampered corporations, leading off the story by saying that if real people were dodging their taxes on this scale, there would be public outrage.

The very first thing I thought of when I read the first of these GAO news stories was “were the corporations that aren’t paying taxes also not earning income?

In the U.S. (and in Canada, and probably most other developed nations), corporations pay “income” taxes on their profits, not their sales. This makes sense to most people when you explain it to them. “Sales” refers to the amount of money a business takes in. Subtract “costs” (what they pay out) from that, and the leftovers are what they keep: “profit”. Taxing based on sales (which would ignore costs and profitability) isn’t very effective, because it would hurt a an already struggling company with high sales and low or negative profitability (think GM) yet give a company with small sales and great profitability. There are such things as taxes on certain assets (which would effect business which own those assets, which may tend to be larger), but that’s not what the study was about.

Most people think of corporations as big entities with thousands of employees, woldwide reach, and millions (or billions) in sales — and thus want them to pay millions of dollars in taxes. The truth is that most corporations are small and local; many have only one employee. Many are short-lived too (many don’t survive beyond five years, although the actual numbers vary depending on the study). A lot of them don’t have profits in every year. The laws allow a business who has a loss in one year to apply it against their profits in another year for the purposes of taxes (allowing that business to “catch up” from a business slowdown). Some (similar to my own business, although I’m not incorporated) pay out all of their post-expense sales money to their employee(s) (who then pay personal income taxes on it), and thus show no profit and pay no corporate tax.

As it turns out, what I wrote above is probably a better explanation for the results than “corporate tax-dodging loopholes”. The GAO report itself wrote, in the very first paragraph of the summary:

Most large [foreign-controlled] and [US controlled corporations] that reported no tax liability in 2005 also reported that they had no current-year income. A smaller proportion of these corporations had losses from prior years and tax credits that eliminated any tax liability.

However, that’s not the story you got from most of the news articles.

A few sources did try to offer counterarguments to the popular story. Fark summed it up nicely:

Do corporations really pay no taxes? Or is it just a bunch of overhyped media BS on a slow news day? The real numbers indicate the latter

This is yet another example of why counterarguments are necessary in most (if not all) discussions. Facts don’t speak for themselves (in fact, they don’t speak at all; they don’t have mouths), but everyone with an opinion or an agenda will be quick to offer theirs as the “correct interpretation” of the facts.

It’s too much to ask for an unbiased interpretation of the facts from any one source (as evidenced by the countless examples of biased interpretations) so your best bet is to get multiple interpretations, analyze the reasoning behind their conclusions, and determine the best conclusion based on the strength of the arguments.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean picking the best argument out of the group of all arguments. Each argument should have some aspect of the truth in it (if it’s completely faulty then you can discard it). Conclusions will usually only be true if their assumptions are correct, and often decision making comes down to picking from the most probable (but not necessarily correct) assumptions. If it comes down to a choice between one good argument with bad assumptions and one bad argument with good assumptions, you might get the best results by combining the two.

Alternate headline: “New Spirit of Chinese-American Cooperation comes to Cuba”

Quick, in which country do you have greater freedom: China or the United States?

The answer is definitely the U.S., where the laws ensuring freedom have been on the books for over two hundred years. Freedom is at the core of the American legal and political system.

However, take away all the laws written on paper for the moment. How free are you in real, every day situations?

Elliotte Rusty Harold just got back from China, and he says that he felt freer on the streets of Beijing:

Entering China, I was prepared to be polite to cops, show my passport as necessary, and explain as best I could just why I was walking around sewage treatment plants with camera and binoculars. To my surprise I never had to. The simple fact is that I could walk absolutely anywhere I felt like in Beijing without being hassled by anyone. … There were surveillance cameras, but fewer than in the U.S. or London. Getting on the subway, no one wanted to look inside my bags. All transactions were cash.

…

I saw fewer traffic stops, arrests, and police actions against other citizens than I do in a typical week in the states. In fact, I think I saw a grand total of two, both related to car accidents; and neither looked very serious.

Somehow I thought a one-party, authoritarian state would be more oppressive than this. At least in the capital, Beijing compares favorably to major U.S. cities. To be honest, that doesn’t speak well for the U.S. If we can’t be less of a police state than a one-party, nominally Communist nation like China, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Disclaimer: the plural of anecdote is not data — and this is only a singular anecdote. But I thought it was interesting and postworthy nonetheless.

What important here is that actions speak louder than words. I think that it’s very important to have freedom built into the laws (one thing that the U.S. does better than Canada). However, those laws are only written on goddamn pieces of paper, and if they’re not enforced / respected, then they’re meaningless.

It figures: now that I’m living in Canada and earning US dollars, the exchange rate between the two hits its worst level in my lifetime.

Still, I’m not complaining too loudly: I did pay off my student loans while the exchange rate was near the historically best levels (circa 1999). Complaining that the exchange rate is poor is like complaining about the weather: you can’t do much about it, unless you’re willing to move… and it’ll probably change by the end of the week anyway.

Microsoft is going to set up shop in Vancouver. One of the reasons for doing so is the more favorable immigration policy in Canada:

The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft�s corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S.

This is a good thing for Vancouver and Canada, a big win for those who favor relaxed immigration policies (such as myself), and a big slap in the face for those in favor of tighter immigration controls — both for economic and homeland-security reasons.

There are smart & talented people all over the world. Those people may not be able to do the work they want to do in their home countries for a variety of economic and political reasons. Many of those people aren’t allowed to work in the U.S. due to the American love-hate relationship with immigration; this practice will allow them to work in a similar (better?) environment. While they do that, they’ll draw a salary (which is largely made up of U.S. money) and spend most of that within Canada (on taxes and domestic purchases).

Microsoft is showing that it’s not just trying to lobby for an H1B cap increase (as many have claimed): they’re serious enough about a real problem to take some actions outside the realm of the U.S. Government. The message to the American closed-border crowd is very clear: current policy is detrimental to business, and if it’s not corrected the U.S.A. will be loose out in the long run.

As of yesterday I’ve been back living in Canada for one year. Over all it’s really good to be back.

The most notable improvements, in my experience, are:

1. The friendliness and competency of the average stranger (the people you meet on the street, on the road, at the check-out, and at the customer service call center).
2. The general positive attitude of the people.
3. The lack of social/cultural/political division and conflict.
4. Affinity for nature, expressed through outdoor activity and concern for the environment.
5. The number of days with pleasant weather.
6. Not having to jump through hoops to appease the immigration police.
7. The unopressiveness of the health care system. We’re getting better care thusfar without the high premiums and threat of bankruptcy-inducing medical bills.

The most notable declines:

1. The lack of access to good online retailers.
2. Worse restaurants overall.
3. Fewer options for air travel.

I’ll note that a lot of this is regional (Calgary vs. Ft. Lauderdale) rather than national (Canada vs. USA), but a lot of it does apply elsewhere in both cases.

We’re both very happy to be here.

Laura and I are watching To Serve and Protect, the Canadian version of COPS. When compared against its southern counterpart, it’s comically dull. There’s no wrestling, tasering, or footchases. It’s basically just cops (in mustaches) picking up drunks and pot smokers. And everyone (the busted and the busters) is polite with each other.

I lived and worked in the US for almost 8 years. I met quite a few people, and got to know some of them well. I’ve encountered many more on the Internet, especially on places like SlashDot. I was there both before and after September 11, 2001 and saw the changes. Most of the people I got to know to any reasonable degree were of the same background/ class/ economic strata/ educational level… mostly college-educated techies. I knew a few that were departures from that community.

I’ve already written a bit about “Americans”. As with everything else on my blog, what I write is my opinion, based on my experiences. I can write about Americans in the plural sense and not worry about necessarily painting my friends with the same brush. I know the difference between the aggregate traits of a group and the individuals within the group.

There are differences in Canadians and Americans; I think the differences are apparent and interesting because at the core they are very much the same (thus the differences are accentuated). I’ll be writing about that more in the future, I’m sure.

Oh yeah… and on my blog at least, “Americans” refers to citizens of the United States of America… as opposed to residents of the Americas. My wife, a Costa Rican (ie: a “Central American”) loves to debate that distinction.

When it comes to socialism vs. capitalism in economic discussion, there’s lots of evidence and good arguments for both sides of the debate. That’s a topic I’m interested in.

But when it comes to authoritarianism vs. libertarianism, I think the issues are much more cut-and-dried: authoritarianism is pretty much always a bad thing for everyone but the authority.

From Venezuelan Congress grants Chavez power to enact by decree:

“Viva President Hugo Chavez, long live socialism!” National Assembly President Cilia Flores said as she proclaimed the law approved.

Note that they’re (intentionally) confusing Chavez’s socialist economic strategy (which I think is a legitimate strategy to hold, even if it’s ultimately wrong) with his authoritarian grab for more power. That sort of thing happens all the time, and it often works.

The key to understanding politics is that it isn’t a one-dimensional spectrum; there’s more to the world than Left-versus-Right. (Incidentally, that is absolutely not understood by most Americans, and that’s something that enabled the current Republicans to masquerade as conservatives. By most measures, they’re not.) One of the more useful divisions I’ve seen (and adopted) is to split political ideology into social and economic axes: that is, the role of authority (versus individual liberty) and the means of a creating a successful economy (free-market versus central planning).

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out The Political Compass and take their test see where you land on the social and economic scales. Here’s my most recent one; it actually comes out more socialist than my previous tests (but still mostly center). I’m

On the same page as the test results is a chart showing various leaders/famous people and how they’d score if they took the test (based on their public statements):

Note how almost of the “big-name” leaders score high on the authoritarian side. That is, of course, no accident: if you’re the authority, you’re probably more likely to think that authoritarianism (ie: Do-As-I-Tell-You-To) is a good way to do things. And, if left to their own devices, someone given authority will tend to exert it in order to keep it/gain more. That is exactly why authoritarianism needs to be kept in check; it’s self perpetuating, and it’s only beneficial to those who have it.

Flickr is a fun site. Not only do you get to host your photos, but it also tells you how popular they are by several standards. One of those standards is the number of page hits.

Laura and I were living in Florida when Hurricane Katrina passed through in 2005. At that point it was only a medium-size Category 1 (ie: relatively weak) hurricane. Some friends lost their power for several days, but we were pretty much unscathed. After it passed over Florida, Katrina proceeded to move into the Gulf of Mexico and wipe out New Orleans.

For something to do, I took some pictures of the hurricane aftermath. In our area, that mostly amounted to blown leaves and some tree branches. I took some pictures of our pool, which had lots of crap floating in it. None of it was particularly interesting. (A few months later, Hurricane Wilma would hit our area a lot harder, and I got some much more interesting photos of that.

One of the boring pictures of my dirty pool became my most-viewed picture ever — due exclusively to people looking for photos tagged “katrina”. That’s pretty disheartening for a budding photographer.

Later on, as we moved to Calgary, my photography skills improved, and I discovered Autostitch, I took this picture of Lake Louise:

It’s also been quite popular on my Flickr page. As of this posting, it’s received 71 hits, while the dirty Katrina pool has received 82.

The Lake Louise picture is, I think, much more deserving of the top spot. So, in the hopes of scoring some additional hits for it, I’m posting it to my blog.

I haven’t linked at all to the pool picture; that would, of course, defeat the purpose of this post. If you really want to see it, you’ll have to go digging.