Contriving

Income redistribution is ok because it’s already done?

» I Voted for Barack Obama on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

As for the big focus on “wealth redistribution?” We’ve been doing it for years, it’s called the progressive tax system. While it seems like you’re punishing success and being a bit socialist, the alternative is far worse. Imagine a nation where there is an upper class and a very large lower class with few economic opportunities, filled with anger, desperation, and despair, and with very few options. Not pretty huh? America is still the land of opportunity, even if success is taxed a little more.

The above quote is taken from a blog about personal finance that I enjoy following. Can you see the logical fallacy contained within? I’ll give you a minute…

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Ok, time is up.

Apparently, the author is attempting to say “Don’t worry about income redistribution because it’s already being done.” This is a mashing up of several logical fallacies.

Let’s say that you are of the opinion that income redistribution of the type we already have (progressive tax system), is a good thing. It doesn’t automatically follow that another type, or more, or less is also a good thing.

Dishonesty in political advertising

I cannot think of a political ad that I’ve seen, read, or heard this year that didn’t have a degree of dishonesty in it.  I don’t know how people can accept people behind these as leaders and be persuaded by them.  The following example, is one I just heard for the billionth time and it’s ridiculous.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the Obama ads that posit that McCain is a bad choice because he voted with Bush 90% of the time.

Do you see the dishonesty there?

I have no idea if that statistic is true, but let’s say it is.  For it to matter to a potential voter you have to know a couple of things not provided in the advertisement.  Is 90% of Bush’s legislation “bad”?  I have a hard time believing that is true, despite all of the horrible things coming out of the Bush camp.  There are many, many laws passed about mundane, non-consequential things.  Add that to the good things Bush has done, and it surely seems that 90% bad legislation is a stretch.  Does this supposed 90% of the time that McCain voted with Bush align with the bad legislation Bush provided?

It’s all a ploy to get you to vote your emotions.

The news

I’m constantly learning about new ways to look at things when reading one of my favorite sites, Overcoming Bias.

A recent post has me thinking a lot about what the stock market actually is.

Speculators were blamed for rising oil prices a few months back, but not for recent falling oil prices. Short-selling speculators were recently blamed for falling stock prices, and actually banned for a few weeks, but no one proposed banning buying speculators two years ago when stocks were rising. Now Steven Pearlstein of the Post wants to close financial markets for a week:

The author of this post, Robin Hanson, goes on to describe the stock market as a new outlet in which stock prices, and the market as whole, merely informs us about the future prospects of companies.

Aside from times when firms issue stock or buy it back, stock trades do not change a firm’s total capital; they just gives us news about its future prospects. Sure some of of these stock “reporters” can have incentives to mislead us, but newspaper reporters can also have incentives to mislead us. Systems for detecting and punishing misleading reporters are far stronger and more effective in financial markets than in newspapers.

eSkeptic: Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Acupuncture. Ha. (Scroll down a bit for the acupuncture article.)

In this week’s eSkeptic, Skeptic magazine’s very own Skepdoc, Harriet Hall M.D., punctures the acupuncture myth and tells you why “almost everything you’ve heard about acupuncture is wrong.”

DNA could reveal your surname

This seems quite crazy, but if it works it seems like it would be quite a tool for law enforcement.

Scientists at the world-leading Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester – where the revolutionary technique of genetic fingerprinting was invented by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys- are developing techniques which may one day allow police to work out someone’s surname from the DNA alone.