apps – Looking Forward

September 28, 2017

Horseless Carriages And Taxes

I noticed that the White House unveiled today its proposal for many changes in US taxes. I don’t normally comment on current political controversies and am not going to do so now, whatever my private views are on the policies.

But, as someone with an interest in 21st century technology, I did take notice of one thing about the proposal that I’ll comment on– admittedly something not as important as other aspects of the plan, but something that seems so outdated.

It is another example of how, for all the talk about technology and change, far too many people – especially public officials – are still subject to what the media expert Marshall McLuhan called the “horseless carriage syndrome”. When automobiles first getting popular a hundred years ago, they were seen as carriages with a motor instead of a horse.

Only much later did everyone realize that the automobile made possible a different world, including massive suburbanization, increased mobility for all generations, McDonald’s and drive-ins (for a couple of decades anyway), etc. Cars were really more than motorized, instead of horse-driven, carriages.

Similarly, tech is more than the sometime automation of traditional ways of doing things. Which brings me back to taxes.

In pursuit of a goal of simplifying the tax system, the White House proposed today to reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three.
(This image is from the NY Times.)

And that brings me to a question I have previously asked: why do we still have these tables of brackets that determine how much income tax we’re supposed to pay?

The continued use of tax brackets is just another example of horseless carriage thinking by public officials because it perpetuates an outmoded and unnecessary way of doing things.

In addition to being backward, brackets cause distortions in the way people make economic decisions so as to avoid getting kicked in a higher tax bracket.

But we no longer have to live in a world limited to paper-based tables. Assuming that we don’t go to a completely flat single percentage tax – and even the White House today doesn’t propose that – there is nothing in a progressive tax that should require the use of brackets. Instead, a simple system could be based on a formula which would eliminate the negative impacts of bracket-avoiding behavior that critics of progressive taxation point to.

And all it would to implement this is an app on our phones or the web. An app could the most basic flat tax formula, like “TaxOwed = m * TaxableIncome” where m is some percentage. It could also obviously handle more complicated versions for progressive taxes, like logarithmic or exponential formulas.

No matter the formula, we’re not talking about much computing power nor a very complicated app to build. There are tens of thousands of coders who could finish this app in an afternoon.

Again, the reduction of tax brackets from 7 to 3 is not among the big issues of the proposed tax changes. But maybe we’d also get better tax policies on the big issues from both parties if public officials could also reform and modernize their thinking – and realize we’re all in the digital age now.

[OK, I’m off my soapbox now 😉 ]

May 3, 2016

Why Do We Still Have Tax Brackets?

We’ve just passed the tax deadline and reflecting on it I was vexed
again by this question: why do we still have these tables of brackets
that determine how much income tax we’re supposed to pay?

I can
understand there was a time, many decades ago, that the government
wanted to keep things simple so each person could easily determine the
tax rate that would apply. And I know that the continued use of tax
brackets is not the biggest problem around. However, tax brackets are
just another symptom of government’s failure to see the widespread
deployment of technology in the public and its failure to use basic
technology for simple improvements that are appropriate in this century.

Brackets
cause some problems. Politicians who advocate a single flat tax rate
often start with the argument that their approach would be so simple
people could just send in a postcard. Putting aside the merits or
demerits of a flat tax, for the moment, there is something retro about
telling people to use a postcard in 2016.

From 2000 to 2015, postcard usage dropped by more than two thirds, an
even greater drop than in first class envelope mail. The Washington
Post even had a story last year with a headline that asked “Are postcards obsolete?”

Where would we even find these postcards? Would the IRS mail them to us? 🙂

Those
who argue for flat taxes or lower taxes in the higher brackets
implicitly say that people will work less if it means an obvious jump in
tax rates by shifting into a higher bracket. There are also those who
advise people how to avoid this problem, as did a Forbes magazine article
last month which started out saying that

“the key tax challenge facing
retirees: being helplessly catapulted into rising tax brackets [because
our] tax code is progressive.”

Indeed, with the current set of progressive tax rates, your percentage of tax goes up as your income goes up.

But we no longer have to assume we live a world limited to paper-based tables.

There
is nothing in today’s world that requires the use of brackets in a
progressive tax system. Indeed, a system based on a formula instead
would eliminate the negative impacts of bracket-avoiding behavior that
critics of progressive taxation point to.

There are a few possible
formulas that might work. The most complex would be a logarithmic or
exponential curve, which a computer can nevertheless easily compute. If
you want to make it even simpler, another formula would set the
percentage tax rate as a percentage of income. (Remember school math?
TaxRate = m * Income where m is some small fraction.)

No matter
the formula, computers can handle it. The IRS could make a formula
available on line or over the phone — just enter your taxable income and
it will tell you what you owe. It can be built into the calculator
function of cell phones. There are tens of thousands of coders who
could finish this app in an afternoon.

Of course, the IRS says that it now offers an app, but it doesn’t take advantage of the computing power of the mobile device nor help you figure out the amount you owe.

While
we’re at the effort to bring government into the modern technological
era, let’s also consider where those taxes go. Why do we still have
fixed budgets?

The budget reform of the 1920s was developed in a
world that did not have the ability to dynamically make calculations.
So every year, government officials make their best guess on the
condition of the economy, the demand from an unknown number of
potentially needy citizens and other factors that determine the ebb and
flow of public finances. Since the budget process is lengthy, they make
this guess well ahead of time so they could be trying to predict the
future more than 18 months ahead of time.

A rolling budget would
work better by automatically adjusting each month to the flow of revenue
and the demands on government programs — and all you need is a big
spreadsheet on a not-so-big computer. However, the budget makers would
have to decide what their priorities are. For example, for every
percentage of unemployment, we need to put aside $X billion dollars for
unemployment insurance payments. It would take work to do this for each
of the promises the government makes — although maybe not as much work
as trying to guess the future.

(Of course, the real obstacle to a
rolling budget model is that policy makers would be forced to make more
explicit their priorities.)

I could go on, but you get the idea.
Buying billions of dollars of technology products is not enough.
Government needs also to bring technology into its thinking and design.

[Note: this is an update of my blog
post in 2012]

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/143790789669/why-do-we-still-have-tax-brackets]

September 22, 2015

Engineering Human Biology

Although information technology companies get most of the attention in discussions of future trends, it’s worth remembering that biotechnology and medical developments will perhaps have a greater impact on our lives going forward.

The engineering of human biology is already moving rapidly, sometimes in ways that are even scarier than the dystopian visions you can read about future computer technology.

In its August issue, WIRED magazine had a story about scientists creating new enhanced capabilities to reorder genes. The article was titled “Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up.” with this teaser:

“We now have the power to quickly and easily alter DNA. It could eliminate disease. It could solve world hunger. It could provide unlimited clean energy. It could really get out of hand.”

And

“The end of life as we know it”.

More recently, in another example, researchers at the University of California San Francisco announced that they have created a way to “print” human tissue on demand. Their goals in the short run are not as dramatic as WIRED portrayed, but the possibilities are also large.

In another form of biological engineering, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University was given an award several months ago by the Defense Department’s DARPA. While there have been exoskeletons to help soldiers with limb injuries (or just to take a load off their bodies), these have been clunky metallic models. The scientists at Harvard are to develop a more comfortable, less noticeable, exoskeleton – a Soft Exosuit as described in this video.

A few miles away, however, other scientists are doing away with the need for such external supports in something from science fiction stories – the Massachusetts General Hospital announced in June that its staff had developed a “transplantable bioengineered forelimb”. The chief researcher at MGH noted:

“Limbs contain muscles, bone, cartilage, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and nerves – each of which has to be rebuilt and requires a specific supporting structure called the matrix. We have shown that we can maintain the matrix of all of these tissues in their natural relationships to each other, that we can culture the entire construct over prolonged periods of time, and that we can repopulate the vascular system and musculature.”

Of course, before we get to these biological futures, there is already computer technology to help our bodies. The mental health profession has been one of the early adopters of information technology, so let’s start with that.

Thriveport promises its MoodNotes app:

“helps you to: Track your mood and identify what influences it; Develop healthier thinking habits; Learn about “traps” in your thinking style and how to avoid them; Bring new, helpful perspectives to situations; Increase your self-awareness; [and] Reduce your distress and enhance your sense of well-being”

Along the same lines, the research staff of the University of Rochester “have developed an innovative approach to turn any computer or smartphone with a camera into a personal mental health monitoring device.” It analyzes “selfie” videos when you use social media.

The number of physical health apps and inexpensive devices available now is too numerous to be called news anymore.

But a couple of months ago, Australia’s Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics announced that they had “created a simple, portable and economic biosensing device that allows for immediate diagnostic testing of arthritis, cystic fibrosis, acute pancreatitis and other clinical diseases.” They built it because

“the device has enormous potential for use in point of care medical diagnostics, particularly in remote or developing areas where professional and expensive research laboratory equipment is unavailable”.

They’ve also made their software available so you can convert your smartphone into a “portable bioanalytical devices”.

Finally, to keep healthy, you apparently not only need to monitor your body, but also to monitor the environment where you live and work. So along comes the network-connected CubeSensors, which claims that it will “help you discover how small changes in your environment also affect your wellbeing” by observing factors like air quality, air pressure, temperature, humidity, noise and light.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/129639401278/engineering-human-biology]

October 2, 2013

Games As The New Model For Business Software?

For most of the last couple of decades, business software has been pretty much the same – a series of forms that essentially automated the company procedure manuals, which preceded the days of computers. Yes, with Windows and the Mac, those forms became prettier, but they’re usually still some kind of form. And, aside from down lists of things like the list of countries or states, there isn’t much intelligence behind those forms.

It’s time to change that approach and learn from enormously popular digital games. Learn what exactly?

For too many people, games are all about vicarious shoot-em-up scenes or, at best, fantasy adventures. Business software designers could have some fun applying those techniques – imagine a “killer sales” app :-). But there’s a deeper level of interaction with technology that game designers have discovered.

Game software does three things well. First it motivates people to continue to play the game. Second, it’s conversational, offering frequent bite-sized interactions with users. Third, it adjusts to the user’s behavior, indeed learns from what the user does – while the user is also learning.

Compare that to typical business software. The motivation to use it is mostly external – your paycheck or your desire to get something from an unfeeling bureaucracy. The form is big and long, like a lecture or sermon, not a conversation. And the course of the interaction varies little from person to person; there’s little learning on either side of the interaction.

Is it any wonder that game players feel so much more engaged than users of business software?

But the three aspects of good game software can easily be adapted to the business world and anyone undertaking a major development of business software today should learn from those techniques.

Three additional observations about this:

Motivation is not just about how many points you can rack up compared to others. The best game designers provide support for the range of human motivations in order to help the many different kinds of players. So, for some, the motivation is very much about winning the competition. For others, social approval in the form of likes and other recognition is more important. For others, getting it 100% right is the goal.

More generally, it’s important to realize that there is a sophisticated use of this tool and also a simplistic use. Indeed, not every game that’s sold is a good example of the value of gamification.

The funny thing is that many of the people I meet who have some control over the development of software in their organizations are avid game players. Yet they ignore the lessons of their personal life when planning what will happen in the business. Does that make sense?

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/62900227376/games-as-the-new-model-for-business-software]