Scattered things...

[pmb]

• I remain skeptical of quite a few things that Hillary Clinton stands for - increased censorship is pretty much always wrong, and she's too willing to roll over and find the "middle ground" between the centrist position and the loony right - but linking the federal minimum wage to the congressional wage is a stroke of genius.
• 12 catches of 5 clubs. And I could count them myself instead of having someone else tell me how many I got. That was most pleasing.
• Conference submission date is May 16th. Work work work. Then I am done with the research project that is turning out to be kind of orthogonal to the research I want to do. Then it's all area exam all the time. Work work work. Then the term is over.
• And this summer I am teaching "Intro to Programming" in Python in a 4-week intensive (7/24-8/16). Using John Zelle's book based on the advice of several people. I am psyched. The rest of the summer is going to be spent biking and hanging out and reading and recovering from a relatively rough year of grad school.

Comments

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

To some degree, because money has declining marginal utility. You are willing to do a lot more for the first million than the second, and for the first ten million than the second.

Look at it this way: Who do you think is easier to bribe, someone who makes $100K/yr or someone who makes $1M/yr? I'd be willing to wager that the latter requires quite a bit higher bribes. And higher price for bribing means less bribing happens.

[roninspoon.livejournal.com]

That's based on the perception that greed is a rationale decision and not a compulsion. I'd disagree with you. I'd suggest that people with more money are morelikely to accept a bride, regardless of amount, because people who have money always want more. At least, that's been my experience.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

I think you are mixing up two different effects.

It is true that having money is a signal that the person likes money and thus will want more money. But I think that *for a given person*, the more money they have, the less they value an additional dollar.

I'm not claiming that if you pay a congresscritter $1M/year, they won't accept bribes. But I think they are a helluva lot less likely to accept a $10K bribe. After all, they have just as much to lose if they get caught, and less to gain, because that $10K doesn't mean as much to them. I don't think people are always rational - but they do a reasonable job at estimating reward vs. chance of getting caught. And they don't even need to do a good job for my point to be true - they just need to do things less when the benefits go down but the costs stay the same. And there is a ton of evidence that in most situations, people are consistent that way.

Everyone has some money, and everyone wants more money. (and a pony). That's the nature of life.