Proposition 87, for those who haven't been assiduously mugging up on their civic duties, is one of the ballot propositions that will be appearing on the ballots of California voters this November. The proposition system in general is part of California's bold experiment in direct democracy. Proposition 87 in particular levies a tax on "any person who takes oil from the earth or water in this state in any manner," and uses the proceeds to fund research into alternative energy. Here are lobbying websites: pro and contra. As it happens, I vote "no" on all propositions for no better reason than sheer bloody-mindedness. But if you occasionally like to vote "yes," then this post is for you.
Some of you may know that I support increasing gasoline taxes, like many economists and public figures both right-of-center (Martin Feldstein, Gary Becker, Greg Mankiw) and left (Paul Krugman, Al Gore). This is essentially a Pigovian tax; it's a tax on activities that produce negative externalities. If some of the smoke from my factory drifts into your yard, and you have to clean it up, I'm essentially forcing you to pay part of the costs of my production. By putting a tax on my factory, you can get me to pay the full social cost of my polluting activities (and perhaps, using the revenue, pay your cleanup costs). Such Pigovian taxes are considered efficient ways of fixing externalities.
Can a tax on oil production in California be justified on such grounds? To answer that, we have to be clear as to exactly what the effects of such an oil tax would be. Pick up your microeconomics textbook and flip to the section on tax incidence: you'll read that the burden of an ad valorem tax does not necessarily lie with who is levied on. Instead, the incidence depends on the relative elasticities of demand and supply. Elasticity is the ratio of the percentage change in quantity demanded or supplied to the percentage change in price that caused it, as the change in price goes to zero. (∂q/∂p p/q) What this means is that the burden of the tax lies upon demanders if they are less likely to change their buying behavior in the face of a tax; otherwise, it lies primarily on the supplier.
In this case, which is more elastic, supply or demand? One of the biggest concomitants of elasticity is the availability of substitutes. For instance, wheat bread has some obvious substitutes: white or sourdough bread. Even a small increase in the price of wheat bread will cause the quantity demanded to fall by a larger amount, since many consumers will just buy white bread instead. Does domestic oil have any obvious substitutes? Why, yes, it does: foreign oil.
This puts us in a position to examine some of the claims made by the ads from both sides of the issue. Will this measure increase the price of gas, as the "No on 87" side says? Probably not by much. The tax will be mostly eaten by domestic oil producers. In the long term, prices might be slightly higher than they would have been, due to the effects of the tax on long-run elasticity of supply. What about the "Yes on 87" side's claim that the measure makes it illegal for oil companies to "pass the cost" of the tax onto consumers? For one thing, it doesn't make much sense to speak of oil companies "passing the costs on." You might as well say that consumers are bidding the prices up. For another, as I just pointed out, it isn't profit-maximizing for domestic oil companies to accept a higher price anyway. What about the "No on 87" side's claim that this measure will increase imports of foreign oil? This claim, at any rate, is probably true.
I can see one reason to support this measure, viz. if you think there are significant negative externalities associated with producing oil in California, as opposed to elsewhere. I don't. I can see another bad reason for supporting this measure: if you think that for national security reasons we should slow down drilling California oil so that if there's another embargo or something we'll still have some reserves. (This is a bad argument because it's terribly expensive to restart oil production in a field where it's been shut down.)
On the other hand, if, like me, you think that most of the externalities associated with oil and gasoline stem from actually using oil, then you ought to support a gasoline tax. Since we drive around, make international flights, and so on like good members of the American middle class, this would mean that we would pay higher prices. It would also mean that unlike Proposition 87, a gas tax would actually encourage conservation, whether by taking the Unitrans or buying a Prius. In that respect, it's a step away from Dave Barry's tax plan (1. Everybody pays lower taxes. 2. You, personally, pay no taxes at all.) But hey, nobody said conservation would be easy.
Everyone knows that the hero of our favorite Belgian b.d., Tintin, is a reporter for Le Petit Vingtième, despite the fact that we only see him calling his office once (in Tintin au pays des Soviets). This is also the only place in the books where it's mentioned that Tintin is from Brussels (during his arrest by the German polizei), despite the fact that the environs of his home on 26, rue de Labrador are recognizably Belgian.
... or is it?
In Tintin au Tibet, while vacationing in Switzerland, Tintin receives a letter from his friend, Chang Chong-chen (based on Hergé's real-life friend, Zhang Chongren):
The Chinese address along the side says, left to right:
Xiānggǎng Zhāng Zhòngwén ?
Dīng Dīng xiānshēng táiqǐ
Bǐguó Bùlǔsài'ěr
The question mark represents the partially hidden character at the bottom left.
The first line is simply "Zhang Zhongwen, Hong Kong." Presumably, Zhang Zhongwen was the translation chosen for "Chang Chong-chen" (Tchang Chong-chen in the French version), though I can't imagine why. How did they get wen
from chen? Or is the wen part of some compound with the obscured character? And when did Chang move to Hong Kong, anyway?
The second line is: "Mr. Tintin, please open." Táiqǐ (not the thing I see the old people in the park doing) is a rather old-fashioned phrase used in Chinese letters following the name of the adressee. Google it today and you'll mostly come up with shareholder letters, apparently one of the only places it's still used. Unfortunately, I can't think of a better translation than the rather banal "please open."
And the third line is pay-dirt: "Brussels, Belgium." Interestingly, the Chinese name seems to be based on the Dutch name, Brussel.
Introduction
Most of the people I know in person know that I've begun to muck about with Hindu astronomy in the past few days. Most of them will be happy to know that this blog is going to be an outlet for that sort of thing.
Wherein the manner of timekeeping of the Hindoos is described...
Until premodern and early modern times, many regions of the subcontinent had a calendar with two concurrent cycles: one solar and the other lunisolar. Prominent exceptions were the Hijri calendar (lunar) and the Jalaali calendar (solar), both used by Muslims.
Before the tenth or eleventh centuries, Hindu solar calendars were totally rule-based. This had the advantage of being a calendar of breathtaking simplicity, repeating exactly every 576 years. It had the disadvantage of being kind of inaccurate: while it was remarkably steady in the long run, it had unacceptable variations during specific years. Thus, it was decided that like the Jalaali calendar, the start of the solar year would be based on an Actual Astronomical Event.
Hindu astronomy has always tried to approximate the sidereal year, rather than the tropical year that the Gregorian calendar is based on. If you measure the position of the sun relative to the stars over a period of time, you'll notice that the sun is moving with respect to them. The path the sun takes is known as the ecliptic, and a sidereal year is the amount of time it takes to complete the ecliptic--for it to return to the same position against the stars that it started from. A tropical year, on the other hand, is the amount of time it takes for the sun to complete a turn around the ecliptic, relative to the equinoxes. The equinox is the time when the sun reaches the intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator; more practically, it's when neither hemisphere of the Earth is tilted toward the sun, making day and night exactly the same length. Due to a phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes, the position of the sun at each equinox is slightly further west on the celestial sphere with each passing year. The upshot is that the sidereal year is about 24.5 minutes longer than the tropical year. Since the Gregorian calendar approximates a certain kind of tropical year, the dates of Hindu observances drift gradually with respect to the Gregorian calendar, and also with respect to the seasons. This effect is slightly more pronounced, because Hindu calendars have always overestimated the sidereal year.
A lot of people in the U.S. observed upākarma on Wednesday, August 9—the same as the Indian date. But upākarma is supposed to be observed on the lunar day (more on this later) of paurṇami, which ended several hours before sunrise in the western part of North America. Since in most traditions, the day begins at sunrise, there wasn't any paurṇami on August 9, much less the 12 ghaṭikas ('prox 24 minutes, or the amount of time for the water to drain from a traditional water clock) needed to justify celebrating it on the 9th. This rule is straight from Śrīmad Aḻagiya Śingar, the jīyar of Ahobila Maṭha, so it's gotta be true.
[(360 + λ_moon - λ_sun) mod 360] div 12 + 1
(I expect I got more than a few things wrong on this, so any information or corrections are not only expected, but shamelessly demanded.)
