Author Archives: Burrowowl

Nisemonogatari

Somehow I managed to never write anything about a seriously good series that came out a couple years back called Bakemonogatari. It basically revolved around Araragi Koyomi, a high school student that has an overdeveloped sense of justice. Each plot arc involves him coming across a girl that is in the midst of some kind of personal crisis that is manifesting in a supernatural way. The first arc’s victim was a classmate named Senjougahara, who was beautiful and aloof, and had completely lost her weight. By which I don’t mean she was anorexic, but rather that she didn’t weigh anything. With the help of a mysterious occult expert that appears to operate out of an abandoned cram-school, Araragi invariably finds a way to remove or mitigate the girls’ curses and the story moves on to the next incident. Nisemonogatari is the sequel or continuation of Bakemonogatari. Four episodes in we are getting to the meat of the current victim’s plight. Events are conspiring to fill in a bit of the implied back-story from the first season, giving more of an impression that there is truly an over-arcing plot to the story.

The character designs and voice acting are excellent, often provoking conflicting reactions that help keep the presentation of the story off-balance. I found myself sympathizing with characters that on the surface I did not like. The pacing is stylishly disjointed in a manner resembling Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, with oddly-timed cuts and changes in visual style. Again this helps create a form of dramatic tension that might not otherwise be present. Production quality is quite high, with each plot arc having its own intro sequence in the first series, and each episode changing its intro and ending sequences, a rare expense in popular animation. Sometimes I suspect the production companies do this specifically to appeal to a certain flavor of fanboy that sees such changes as an sure sign of quality, but in this case it’s no ruse.

Highly recommended as of four episodes into the second series.

Bickering about tax fairness is dumb

Listening to the radio earlier today, somebody was ridiculing Mitt Romney for claiming in a Univision interview that he had given back nearly 50% back to the community, and that his last two years of taxes indicated this. There were a few points made by the radio host that break down as follows:

He didn’t really release two years of his taxes because he hasn’t filed for 2011 yet and only released an estimate for that tax year.
His net personal tax rate for 2010 was 13.9%.
His charitable contributions were “over 15%.”
At one point in the interview he said he gave back about 40% back to the community, based on 13.9% plus 15%. That’s only 29.9% total.
His claim that the corporate tax rate of 35% is the reason capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes is spurious.
Counting the corporate tax rate of 35% he figures he gave back about 50% of his profits on average for the past two years.

Well, each of those points has some degree of merit and certain degree of bullshit. Clearly the point about giving back about 40% was him confusing some numbers. Romney would have to have been taking something else into account to get to that number. As for the 50% business, let’s take a look at two fairly naive theoretical situations:

In one case, Romney is a sole proprietor of a business, in the other Romney is a shareholder in a corporation. In one case all his profits are income, in the other case his profits are capital gains. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the corporation really pays 35% in taxes:

	Romney-as-income	Romney-as-corporation
Total Profit	$100,000	$100,000
Tithe	$(10,000)	$(10,000)
Personal Income Tax	$(18,824)	–
Social Security	$(12,400)	–
Corporate Income Tax	–	$(35,000)
Capital Gains Tax	–	$(8,250)
Total Tax Paid	$(31,224)	$(43,250)
Cash Remaining	$58,776	$46,750

That’s a naive breakdown, as it doesn’t take into account several thousand pages of tax code, personal exemptions and deductions aside from a 10% tithe to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Personal income tax is at a lower rate than corporate income tax. Social security tax (which you have to double-up on if self-employed because normally your employer has to match what you see on your pay stub) is lower than the capital gains tax, but capital gains is taxed on dividends and such, which are after taxes so it’s 15% of the 65% post-tax corporate income.

At the $100,000 scale, corporate taxes don’t look quite so drastically unfair, do they? The same dollar value of goods or services were sold, and the liability-limiting corporate setup ostensibly pays more in taxes. And yeah, it works out to about 50%. That’s what I think of as the theoretical tax rate that Romney’s accountant starts with, and that guy’s job is to game it down in his client’s favor.

Ramp that scale up to, say, $20,000,000 instead and it’s a bit different. At the personal level Social Security tops off a little over the $100,000 mark, whereas the capital gains and corporate tax rates have no cap. Several thousand pages of tax codes and subsidies and other shenanigans render hypothetical situations like this moot anyway.

“How much did you give back?” is a loaded question that can take into account a lot of things. Does the questioner mean just Federal Income Tax? All federal taxes? Does that count park fees? Taxes on airfare? On your phone bill? Does it count state taxes? If so, is it just state income tax, or do property and parcel taxes count? Or minimum usage fees from municipal utilities? There are dozens of variations built into that seemingly-simple question. Playing “gotcha” about the specific number Romney cites about how much of his money he kicks back to society-at-large (as opposed to simply spending on himself, his friends, and his family) serves little purpose in illuminating the public about important political decisions in the next few months.

Pride, Honor, and Half-Priced Food

Twelve episodes sounds like a short run, but Ben-to manages to wrap things up rather nicely in that time frame. Should the producers choose to run off on some endless perpetual status-quo like Dragonball or One Piece or Bleach did, Ben-to has positioned itself nicely, while still providing folks like me with a satisfactory ending. The overall story arc is a simple one, of a young man finding his place in a strange situation. Over the first few episodes we are gradually introduced to a cast of recurring characters, some endearing, some obnoxious, some a little of both. Throughout the process we are steeped in a fictional warrior culture of pride, vengeance, honor, and hunger. We are shown paragons of the way things ought to be, outliers struggling with the norms of discount-food wolves, and several antagonists that epitomize corruptions of the path our protagonist has found himself on.

While the conclusion was satisfactory, I was somewhat disappointed that there was a full-on denouement at all. The outcome of the battle for the grilled eel special wasn’t what mattered. If Ben-to has taught us anything, it is the fight itself that is the most important, of individuals striving in earnest to beat the shit out of each other over supermarket food. Whoever wins it deserves it and will enjoy it; this doesn’t need to be shown.

Not an instant classic, but well worth taking a look.