User talk:Bracton

"Britannica" material on direct v. indirect
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia!

I removed some recent edits regarding the definition of direct versus indirect in the article Direct tax and the article Indirect tax, for the following reasons. The following material was the source material, and is found in Encycl. Britannica regarding direct versus indirect taxes:


 * In the literature of public finance, taxes have been classified in various ways according to who pays for them, who bears the ultimate burden of them, the extent to which the burden can be shifted, and various other criteria. Taxes are most commonly classified as either direct or indirect, an example of the former type being the income tax and of the latter the sales tax. There is much disagreement among economists as to the criteria for distinguishing between direct and indirect taxes, and it is unclear into which category certain taxes, such as corporate income tax or property tax, should fall. It is usually said that a direct tax is one that cannot be shifted by the taxpayer to someone else, whereas an indirect tax can be.

The above discussion is not a discussion of the terms direct tax and indirect tax in the U.S. Constitutional law sense. This is a discussion regarding the "literature of public finance."

By contrast, legal scholars and, more importantly, the U.S. courts, have rejected the concept of a direct tax as being "one that cannot be shifted to someone else."

Under the U.S. legal system, a federal direct tax is simply either a capitation (a head tax) or a "tax on property by reason of its ownership." Anything that does not fall into those two categories is an indirect tax. Period. From about 1895 to 1913, taxes on income from property were also treated as direct taxes, but that treatment ended with the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.

Perhaps the removed material (on which the above quotation appears to be have been based) can be modified, however, to clarify the difference between a theoretical "public finance" view of direct taxes and the separate legal (constitutional law concept) of direct taxes.

Any thoughts? Famspear (talk) 17:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I reworked the material and added it back, with some reorganization to (hopefully) clarify the difference. (I put it back in both the "Direct tax" article and the "Indirect tax" article.) Famspear (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Who has the authority to say that
 * The above discussion is not a discussion of the terms direct tax and indirect tax in the U.S. Constitutional law sense. This is a discussion regarding the "literature of public finance." ?
 * A Wikipedia article should be about all usages unless it is broken out into separate categories, such as (public finance) and (law). I don't see a need to do that, since the two areas have historically influenced one another. I will be providing additional cites to support my edits on the constitutional law meaning when I have the time. Bracton (talk) 19:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Tidelands
You made a good start. I added some formatting. Bearian (talk) 19:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing the work I was going to do after lunch. :) Bracton (talk) 19:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Article Legal Practice

 * I was protrolling articles and I happened to see this article of yours. Please consider making edits to the references and making links to them. If your not sure how to do this then see  How to edit a page thanks.--KingRatedRIV (talk) 16:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Contribution
Thank you for your recent contribution to scientific method; but Talk:Scientific_method --Ancheta Wis (talk) 13:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

renaming articles
Hello--You're right about the capitalization of Game Theory in Communication Networks. The standard way to handle this is to "move" the article to the new, fixed name. ("move" should be one of the tabs you see along with "edit" and "history".) WP usually handles any necessary redirecting from there, making the redirect from the mis-named page to the newly-named page.

It's probably fine to leave it the way it is for now, just letting you know for when it comes up again. C RETOG 8(t/c) 16:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

3RR warning
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. .

I know I'm at 3rr, also. Please consider myself warned, as well, but you've readded incorrect or biased material 3 times. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:13, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Stop x nuvola with clock.svg|40px|left]] You have been blocked from editing for  in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for violating the three-revert rule. Please be more careful to discuss controversial changes or seek dispute resolution rather than engaging in an edit war. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text  below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first.  The duration of the block is 24 hours. Here are the reverts in question. William M. Connolley (talk) 07:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, but the time on the IP was extended from 01:48 to 16:17, which is beyond 24 hours. I request return to 01:48 as originally set. This is blocking not just edits on the Direct tax artcle but on my sandbox edits that I need to work on while waiting for the unblock. Bracton (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Use the extra time to think about it. I'd suggest leaving it alone until the block is lifted.  You may end up annoying an admin into extending this.  -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

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Tag provided. Bracton (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi there—You're still missing your fair use rationale. Also, the page with the image is listed as "Copyright © 2009 Cornell University Department of History." I'm going to nominate it for deletion, since I do not believe that the image qualifies for the tag you gave it. &mdash;Notyourbroom ( talk ) 00:13, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

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A Thank You from a former Wikipedian
Thanks for your work on constitutional militia movement. I gave up on Wikipedia because the entire leadership structure/network is so biased that I found it impossible to work on militia movement related articles without having several far-lefties tag teaming me with their edit warring and POV. I hope you haven't given up on Wikipedia, and if you're still at it, I hope you'll find additional sources to include in these articles. Dig deep; the "lamestream" media has occasionally admitted their deeply ingrained left-wing institutional bias, and one has to go to alternate parties to find usable material here. Best wishes, Anonymous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.65.39.185 (talk) 09:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

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Natural-born-citizen clause
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 * You are commenting on one step in a chain of edits. Should wait for a hour or two to allow the edits to be completed. To the best of my knowledge the error you cite was correct about two minutes later. Bracton (talk)


 * No, footnote #44 in the current version of the article (a cite of Perkins v. Elg, containing a mention of Ankeny v. Governor which you added today in the middle of a URL) is still broken as best I can see. —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 04:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, now I see the problem. Must have inadvertently pasted a copied string while the cursor was in the wrong position. Corrected now. Made an endnote out of it. Thanks for spotting it. Bracton (talk)

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Intergenerational discounting in Delayed gratification
Hi, I reverted your edits of the article Delayed gratification for two reasons: Feel free to add the "intergenerational discounting" section back in (at an appropriate place) if you provide sources. --filip (talk) 16:16, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You removed a whole section (Ecological factors) under the "Animal studies" heading without providing an explanation.
 * You added unrelated material (about intergenerational discounting) instead, which was unsourced and, while interesting to read, seems to be original research.

Why I deleted James Madison from Game Theory
Since you defended the inclusion of James Madison in the Game Theory article in the past, I thought I should explain why I took him out.

The text as I found it said that James Madison "is now recognized [as having done game theory]." This is different from saying "James Madison did game theory." To say that James Madison is recognized as having done game theory, the appropriate source is a history of game theory. I examined most of the books here, notably Dimand, and as far as I could tell James Madison was not mentioned. In some cases, I could do a text search of the contents, in other cases I looked at the index, in other cases I relied on Google Books' "search inside this book feature." Obviously, this isn't foolproof, but I don't think the burden is on me here.

You seemed to place great reliance on Rakove as a source for your claim. Rakove is an American historian, not a historian of mathematics. As such, he's not a proper source for "Madison is recognized for doing game theory" but only perhaps "Madison did game theory." Reading the paper of Rakove's you refer to, I can't tell whether he wants us to literally regard Madison's analysis as equivalent to game theory, in the same sense that other older work was literally game theory, or just as an analogy, saying his reasoning was similar to game theory or something. But even assuming he does mean it literally, and that he understands game theory enough to make this point credibly, it still just means that one guy put forth the novel opinion that James Madison did game theory. This is sufficient to include a reference to game theory in the James Madison article, but not to include a reference to James Madison in the game theory article.

I noticed in the talk page that you mentioned another source, Iain McLean's "Before and after Publius," which presumably contained another independent opinion that James Madison's reasoning in Vices was equivalent to game theory. McLean is a much better source for this kind of thing, since he's a Public Choice guy instead of a straight historian. However, I wasn't able to find "Before and after Publius" on the internet, so I can't tell what he said. However, even if he had equated Vices to game theory, I don't think this rises to the standard of "recognized" (and/or warrants inclusion in the game theory article) for the same reasons I mentioned above.

FWIW, my own opinion is that game theory shouldn't even be mentioned in Madison (although I grant that there is a prima facie reliable source for this claim, and so it could be mentioned). Madison's reasoning in point 7 of Vices does not strike me as any different in kind from the sort of informal reasoning about the behavior of various parties that every political theorist uses. If it counts as literal game theory, why doesn't, say, Plato's Republic? If we ask why Madison is more important than other political theorists, the ordinary response is that he was better at it than them, and that he had a greater impact, not that his political theory included game theory. Dingsuntil (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)