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BadEconomics Discussion Thread, 14 October 2015 (self.badeconomics)

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[–]Kai_Daigoji 1ポイント2ポイント  (35子コメント)

A thought I had the other day: what do people here think about some sort of externality tax on guns? Basically viewing mass shootings etc. as a negative externality.

I can see multiple ways you'd implement it. A tax on bullets, making gun manufacturers legally liable for gun violence and letting law suits and punitive damages do the work of a tax, a straight up gun tax, etc.

Anyways, thoughts?

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[–]VodkaHazereligion+gvt=economics 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

I don't see enough social benefits to letting people in a society easily own guns to outweigh the social costs.

A system like Canada's or Europe's seems to work fine; gun debates are not a thing there. People only argue about gun laws in the US, really, because that's where they're a problem, clearly

[–]arktouros 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Probably because it's none of your goddamn business. Should we ban cars too or alcohol while we're at it?

[–]Polisskolan2 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm European, and I am all for making it easier to own guns.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (29子コメント)

There isn't a clear connection between private gun ownership and the gun homicide rate worldwide (let alone overall homicide).

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/firearmhomicide2.jpg

Within the USA, state by state there does seem to some relationship between gun homicide rate and gun ownership. But really this is a loaded statistic. Here is a regression for overall homicide rate and gun ownership instead:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2FYyqhgE7zs/UNIV3WDVKTI/AAAAAAAAA2M/gZ6FcAtBNpM/s1600/Gun+Ownership+Versus+Homicide+Rates+by+State.PNG

Before a tax on an externality is discussed, first it should be clear that there is actually an externality in the first place.

TLDR: Guns don't kill people, people kill people and all of that.

[–]VodkaHazereligion+gvt=economics -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

/r/intentionally_misleading_dataviz is that-a-way

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 7ポイント8ポイント  (21子コメント)

Uh...I'm noticing the presence of Honduras as an outlier in your regression set. Which makes me think things like income and political institutions are massive omitted variables. You get the expected effect when you restrict this to OECD or more generally rich countries.

[–]VodkaHazereligion+gvt=economics 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Note with respect to the Mexico outlier in that first graph: Using the entire country of Mexico is misleading.

It overlooks some serious heterogeneity, since a lot of the murders are in a few provinces that border the US (the guns generally come from Texas, where you can legally buy a gun from a random person in a parking lot). There's a serious US causality to the Mexico homicide rate

[–]arktouros 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

If using the whole country of Mexico misleading, why isn't using the whole country of America misleading?

http://polnomics.com/2015/10/11/murder-rates-gun-ownership/

Running the numbers by state, there is basically no correlation between high & low gun murder rate states and gun ownership.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (17子コメント)

Why isn't the one one clear outlier (USA) taken out of edit: the second set? Why is the first link randomly a link to gun deaths which is wildly different from gun homicides in the context of externalities? Why are we even talking about gun homicides in the first place rather than overall homicides? This is the precise type of data manipulation that really has me scratching my head when one side claims badstatistics.

Edit: On gun deaths: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mostly-suicides.html?_r=0

I really fail to see how this isn't even worse statistical analysis than looking at overall worldwide numbers in combination with looking at homicide rate by state within the USA and their levels of gun ownership. Edit: If this rebuttal gets a bunch of upvotes I'll actually have lost faith in this subreddit because it is just clearly bad and biased analysis. I don't claim that my analysis is flawless but at least it isn't super obviously biased.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 7ポイント8ポイント  (16子コメント)

In the first link, the US is pretty much on the trendline. It's an outlier because of how far right and up it is, but it's not too far from trend. On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal). And I'm not sure how comparing the US to other rich/OECD countries is "clearly bad and biased analysis" while comparing it to every nation on earth, mostly poor third world nations with shoddy rule of law, isn't.

[–]arktouros 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Because excluding less developed countries means that there is some inherent difference that doesn't qualify them to be part of the analysis. Should we just look at how many gun deaths there are in only upper middle class neighborhoods and rule out inner cities as well?

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (14子コメント)

The first link doesn't even look at the right statistic and once I saw that I immediately stopped looking at it. The large majority of gun deaths are suicide when we were talking about homicide.

It was the second link that the USA appears to be the only outlier. Without it, is there any correlation? Doesn't seem like it. And still we should be looking at overall homicide rather than gun homicide.

[–]ProNerd5 0ポイント1ポイント  (6子コメント)

The total number of gun deaths, inclusive of suicides, is still a relevant statistic to look at. If we are discussing gun control then all types of gun deaths are significant. The US has 3-15 times more gun suicides than all other similar countries.

I don't really understand your point about looking at total homicides rather than only gun homicides. Is it that total homicides scales with gun homicides? I think a better measure to look at would be the proportion of gun homicides compared to total homicides. If we compare a few countries;

Country Homicides (per 100k) Gun Homicides (per 100k) Gun H per H (%)
US 4.7 3.55 75
UK 1.0 0.05 5
Aus 1.1 0.11 10
Can 1.6 0.51 32
Ity 0.9 0.36 40

Even on the measure you insist on the US has markedly more gun homicides than other countries.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (5子コメント)

If we are discussing gun control then all types of gun deaths are significant.

We are discussing forcing gun owners to pay for the external costs of guns by incorporating some form of gun tax (on the manufacturers, extra sales tax, yearly fee, whatever). It is not clear to me how suicide is a large external cost if a person buys a gun in order to kill themselves.

I don't really understand your point about looking at total homicides rather than only gun homicides.

Because we shouldn't care about how another person got killed. If a person is murdered I don't personally care if it was via poison, stabbing or a gun. A person with an extra method to kill another person will just add to that method but doesn't have to add to the overall number of murders there are.

Counting gun homicides only counts the number of deaths caused by guns without also factoring in any homicides that guns might have prevented. I'll make up some numbers to illustrate this point. Let's say that at the current level of gun ownership the US cause 500 more people to be murdered due to guns being a better/easier method to kill people than stabbing. That is a clear negative. However, due to their deterrence effect guns might have also reduced the number of violent crimes committed by 5,000 instances, which prevented 500 of those people from being a victim of homicide. Counting overall homicide includes potential benefits like this with very little draw back. Counting only homicide by firearm rate while ignoring the overall picture tells a very one sided story.

If I wanted to tell an equally skewed story what I could do is run a regression of gun ownership and homicide by methods other than guns. Given what the data is including guns, this would clearly tell the story that guns prevent deaths. I am not saying that that is what is going on, either, because the first point is a huge one that it might just be a case of preferring to use a gun to kill another person instead of any deterrent effect at all. And this is precisely why overall homicide rate is a better metric if a person wants to make the claim that guns cause people to be killed.

[–]ProNerd5 1ポイント2ポイント  (4子コメント)

How can you make point about deterrence coherent with the table I posted showing there are more homicides in the US and that out of those homicides the proportion that are gun related is significantly more in the US compared to other countries?

[–]joeyaa 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

I honestly did not even look at your table once I saw you "randomly" picked only 4 comparison countries. It'd be like if I made a little table here of countries like Austria and Switzerland to compare to the US to make a point I wanted. There is nothing scientific about this.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 1ポイント2ポイント  (6子コメント)

On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal). And I'm not sure how comparing the US to other rich/OECD countries is "clearly bad and biased analysis" while comparing it to every nation on earth, mostly poor third world nations with shoddy rule of law, isn't.

[–]joeyaa 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Also way to completely ignore my second and primary point: homicide rate within the USA seems to be completely uncorrelated with gun ownership levels. That is a far better analysis than anything you've brought up so far. I was expecting /badecon to tell me how instead of looking at just these numbers I should have run a regression on multiple variables at once within the USA such as population density or urban vs rural areas or income inequality and then that would show me why I was wrong. But no, instead of a step forward the response I got is taking several steps backward.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's because my point of contention (and presumably laboreconomist3's directing you to /r/badstats) wasn't necessarily based on your interstate comparisons but on your comparing the US with Honduras and Cote d'Ivoire for your "Internationally there's no link" argument. The former is iffy, but the latter is horrendous.

[–]joeyaa -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

How is the former more "iffy" than any of the numbers you've brought up? These numbers seem quite compelling to me in fact.

[–]joeyaa 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

We are talking about a tax on externalities. If a person decides to kill themselves I am not sure how other gun owners should be responsible for paying for that (relatively small) external cost. Plus a lot of people hold the view that folks should have the right to kill themselves anyway. Certainly you see how this topic is a heck of a lot different than the very clear cost to society if guns increase the murder rate.

Edit: Moreover, that is its own topic entirely and we should be looking up overall suicide rate by country and gun ownership by rich country using this logic - something tells me that those numbers are not going to be too compelling either (Korea, Japan).

[–]lorenzorye 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I would say enabling suicide is an externality due to the loss of human capital.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

On the gun deaths vs. homicides, I'm not sure why suicides are somehow no longer relevant (talking about gun control more generally, not simply the Pigovian tax proposal).

Emphasis added. And most support for legal suicides is for physician-assisted euthanasia for terminally ill patients of sound mind. Of the suicides allowed by guns (or jumping, or pills, or whatever), most of them are impulse decisions that are deeply regretted by those with the fortune to survive.

[–]historymaking101 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Pretty damn clear correlation.

[–]laboreconomist3favorite words: labor, unemployment, trade 3ポイント4ポイント  (5子コメント)

/r/badstats is that way.

N.B. I plan on giving a less snarky reply tomorrow.

[–]joeyaa 1ポイント2ポイント  (4子コメント)

I hope you include some of those "good stats" in that reply. Hopefully it doesn't involve picking enough random sets of places to eventually hit one that tells the story you want to tell. :)

Edit: also a subtle thing in my post is that I am not claiming that these stats tell a clear story, that guns definitely don't cause more homicides. Rather, that someone should actually demonstrate in a reasonable way (there are plenty of unreasonable ones out there already) that there is a connection in the numbers because at a glance there certainly doesn't seem to be one.

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

Comparing the US to other OECD countries or other rich countries (i.e. a more apples-to-apples comparison) reveals a much more damning link. Not exactly picking random sets.

[–]besttrousers 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Jen Ludwig has done some paper with decent idnetification. Why are y'all looking at national cross tabs?

[–]say_wot_againThe one true Noah Smith 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Because I'm lazy.

[–]jambajuic3 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I would only use the second graph if I were you. The first one doesn't really tell a story. If gun ownership goes up, then yeah, deaths related to guns also go up. But the second graph, quite clearly shows a positive correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates.

Could you please link me to the study behind the graph of the rich countries?

[–]MrTossPotMore of a sellout than Mankiw 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

My first thought that gun damage is usually very high to a small number of people, unlike pollution which is a little bad to everyone over time. So what would the mechanism be to counter the externally to gun violence victims.

Then i remembered, this is a primarily US based thread therefore this will never happen so who cares.