A few weeks back I was complaining about this meme and we had a good discussion about it on here. I ended up making a lesson plan about taxes and my students really liked it so I will share it. (It is for students with a basic understanding of integration. But, you could probably rework it to skip that bit.)

taxlesson.pdf

Google Docs (drive.google.com)

(And if you have feedback let me know!)

#tax #taxes #math #mathEducation #lessonplans #calculus

I WILL NOT tolerate any of my former students wandering around in the world saying "nobody ever taught me how to do the taxes" NO. You will not be saying that. I'm not putting up with this. It's just percents and recipes.

(although, I'm glad I looked at the topic more closely, there is more to it than I thought. Interesting stuff. )

I WILL NOT tolerate any of my former students wandering around in the world saying "nobody ever taught me how to do the taxes" NO. You will not be saying that. I'm not putting up with this. It's just percents and recipes.

(although, I'm glad I looked at the topic more closely, there is more to it than I thought. Interesting stuff. )

@futurebird I sometimes wonder if the US is the only country in the world where citizens must compute themselves what they owe in tax. This sounds like a very odd way of doing things.

@MonniauxD @futurebird Why do you hate freedom?

@fuzztech @futurebird sorry?

And I do hope my students find applications for what they learn in my class, that mathematics permeates their world and informs how they solve problems.

But if all I could say is that all my students understand the difference between marginal and effective tax and how brackets are applied? If that's *all* they remember? That'd put them ahead of most adults I meet who generally DO NOT get this concept. And this common misunderstanding has many consequences!

@futurebird I think the inability to get marginal tax rates is motivated reasoning/propaganda. People purposefully don't get it for ideological reasons, then other people hear the tales and unthinkingly accept them.

@futurebird Back in the 2000s when I was active on LiveJournal, I do remember actually educating one of my LJ friends about this, and it was one of my proudest moments there. He was a pretty smart guy who worked in movie CGI in San Francisco. But the circles he moved in were pretty right-libertarian and he was exposed to a lot of their theorizing and would pass it on.

At one point we were discussing taxes, and I mentioned in his comments that when you pass a bracket boundary, only your income above the threshold is taxed at the higher marginal rate, so you don't take home less money. The lightbulb actually went on in his head, and he was so stunned that he made a whole other post explaining this at length and credited me with telling him.

So not everyone who doesn't get it is in bad faith. But I think they've been exposed to bad-faith discussion.

@futurebird Back in the 2000s when I was active on LiveJournal, I do remember actually educating one of my LJ friends about this, and it was one of my proudest moments there. He was a pretty smart guy who worked in movie CGI in San Francisco. But the circles he moved in were pretty right-libertarian and he was exposed to a lot of their theorizing and would pass it on.

At one point we were discussing taxes, and I mentioned in his comments that when you pass a bracket boundary, only your income above the threshold is taxed at the higher marginal rate, so you don't take home less money. The lightbulb actually went on in his head, and he was so stunned that he made a whole other post explaining this at length and credited me with telling him.

So not everyone who doesn't get it is in bad faith. But I think they've been exposed to bad-faith discussion.

@futurebird The thing is, I remember people getting this wrong even in the days when most people filled out a paper 1040 by hand. So they had actually gone through the calculation and they still didn't understand it. Now, most of them probably did this crucial step with a table lookup. But you *can* look at that table in the 1040 and see that it's a function that doesn't have gigantic steps in it. And if I recall correctly, if your income is too high for the table there's a bit where they actually explain the formula, which is piecewise linear.

@mattmcirvin @futurebird

You were on LJ back in the day? Explaining taxes.

@mattmcirvin @futurebird

at every job I've ever had, someone would bring up all the bad-faith right-wing lies about taxes every time taxes were discussed in converastions at work. I encountered this at dishwashing jobs and software development jobs, at postal service jobs and community college computer lab jobs; "every job" is not hyperbolic. (I don't know if it varied regionally, but I encountered it just as often in the Puget Sound area of Washington as I did in Utah.) Everyone gets exposed.

@futurebird The thing is, I remember people getting this wrong even in the days when most people filled out a paper 1040 by hand. So they had actually gone through the calculation and they still didn't understand it. Now, most of them probably did this crucial step with a table lookup. But you *can* look at that table in the 1040 and see that it's a function that doesn't have gigantic steps in it. And if I recall correctly, if your income is too high for the table there's a bit where they actually explain the formula, which is piecewise linear.

@sepdroid @mattmcirvin There are a lot of former #LiveJournal folk on here. I’m one. Although I don’t want to be judged by my early 20s “thoughts” good lord no.

@futurebird @sepdroid @mattmcirvin

I was an on-again-off-again livejournal reader, but I never kept a regular "journal" there, because honestly I was always kind of terrified of the idea. (I didn't know it would get bought up by a russian crime lord, but I was worried just the same.)

@llewelly @futurebird @mattmcirvin

It was a kinder internet where we were only worried about getting fired for complaining about our coworkers on the internet.

@sepdroid @futurebird @mattmcirvin
I definitely had some tense conversations in that era, with employers about my politics, or, more frequently, their perception of my politics. But not for things I said online; usually for answering honestly when asked why I didn't drive. Did it play a role in me losing jobs? Probably, but so many of those companies were so badly run the company fell apart first.

@llewelly @sepdroid @mattmcirvin

“answering honestly when asked why I didn't drive” don’t know what your reasons are but this is … relatable. Although I do sugar it a little, “it’s the whole reason I live in a big city” — seems harsh to just say I think many people who drive are a menace to human life …