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Minnesota Taxes

Jeff Johnson, a 2018 candidate for Minnesota Governor, posted on Facebook:

With all the talk from the left about how federal tax reform will be costly to some taxpayers in very high tax states (like Minnesota), maybe it’s time we stopped complaining about the Feds and solve this problem for Minnesota taxpayers ourselves.

Minnesota is among the highest in the country in income tax, gas tax, beer tax, wine tax, sales tax, corporate tax, death tax, social security benefit tax, business property tax – and I could go on. We’ll never be South Dakota, but how about we remove ourselves from the list of most taxpayer-hostile states in the nation.

And don’t let anyone tell you that we only overtax the “rich” in Minnesota – it’s not just wealthy people who pay gas, sales, beer/wine and social security taxes. More importantly, our lowest income tax rate (applying to anyone making more than $10,350 per year) is higher than the highest rate in 22 other states. We’re not just taxing CEO’s to death in Minnesota, we’re taxing school teachers, mechanics, bartenders and child care providers to death.

It’s time we give Minnesota taxpayers a break!

Minnesota tax rates are unquestionably, by comparison, high. If we can reduce taxes without sacrificing critical services like roads, bridges, education, etc., I’m absolutely for it. But let’s be careful not to overstate the size of the problem / benefit of such a change: it’s only about half a percent of total taxpayer income.

I’ve looked at a few sources, and they show similar results. I’ll use the numbers from one source for consistency. We are 8th highest in the country. The range of overall state and local tax burden across all 50 states is from 7.1% to 12.7%, and Minnesota is 10.8%. We’re thus 2/3 of the way through that range. If the realistic goal is that we’ll never be South Dakota, but we should do better, let’s call that goal being 1/3 into that range instead of 2/3. That means dropping 1/3 * (12.7%-7.1%) = 0.5 percentage points (pp).

To be clear, this reduction would be in terms of overall tax burden, not in some particular tax rate. Larger reductions in, for example, income tax rates would be necessary to create that reduction in burden.

Source: https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-local-tax-burden-rankings/

There is also room for improvement in the progressiveness of our tax system, but we’re doing better there already than in rates. In terms of progressiveness of our taxes, we are currently 13th with regard to income taxes: https://taxfoundation.org/which-states-have-most-progressive-income-taxes-0/

This article, while lacking in actual data, seems to confirm that Minnesota is also highly progressive in terms of overall tax burden (and one of the top states in that regard): http://time.com/money/3667280/unfair-taxes-washington-state/

We’ve also been moving in the right direction. This report shows Minnesota as the #1 state in improving progressiveness from 2011-2014: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication/131621/2000847-federal-state-income-tax-progressivity.pdf

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Informed Consent Required

I replied to this portion of a comment on Reddit:

I don’t think you actually want legislation that dictates a child’s ears cannot be pierced until they are old enough to decide.

I actually do want such legislation. I see permanent, cosmetic (i.e. not for medical reasons) body modifications as something which parents should not be allowed to perform or have performed on their children without informed consent from the child.

Such practices come in many forms, including ear piercing, male circumcision, and female genital mutilation. While the relevant age necessary to give consent should probably vary between these practices, in principle, these should all require informed consent. What one does to their own body is their business, but a child’s body belongs to him or her, not his or her parents.

We actually have such legislation banning female genital mutilation under the age of 18: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/116

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Zero Rating

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/12/16/2014245/att-verizon-tell-fcc-to-back-off-on-net-neutrality-complaints

AT&T wants companies to pay to “sponsor” their zero-rated data. This is the obvious violation of net neutrality. Even if the zero-rating looks good for consumers in the short run (because they can watch video without counting it towards their usage), it is bad for consumers in the long run. Any new video service will count against consumers’ data caps, giving that company a disadvantage. They can only compete if AT&T, at their sole option, chooses to allow them to sponsor zero-rating, and if AT&T charges them the same rate. And even then, this idea of pay-for-access is terrible for many other reasons.

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Raspberry Pi 3 Stratum 1 NTP Server (Ubuntu)

Please use the updated version instead.

Hardware:

I’m in the U.S., so I ordered only the GPS board and case from Uputronics to save on shipping.

Other GPS HATs (and cases) can be used. Consult the Stratum-1-Microserver HOWTO for GPIO pin changes in step 12.

1. From Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker, download the Ubuntu Server Minimal 16.04 image. Note that this is only available using BitTorrent (for bandwidth reasons).

2. Write the image to a Micro SD card.

3. Insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi. Stick the heatsink to the processor. Assemble the case with the Raspberry Pi in it as you go. Connect the GPS antenna and place it near a window. Connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Power up the Raspberry Pi.

4. Login with “ubuntu” as the username and “ubuntu” as the password. Set your own password:
passwd

5. Become root:
sudo -s

6. Generate the missing locale:
locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

7. Disable a broken service:
systemctl disable ureadahead

8. Resize the partition to fill your Micro SD card:
fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
“Delete the second partition (d, 2), then recreate it using the defaults (n, p, 2, enter, enter), then write and exit (w).” — Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker FAQ

9. Set your time zone:
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

10. Set your hostname:
vi /etc/hosts
vi /etc/hostname

11. Actually, I think we want to leave this alone. I can’t reproduce any problem, and keeping fake-hwclock, as designed, makes the clock far less wrong on initial boot (before ntpd steps the clock). Disable fake-hwclock, which otherwise breaks PPS in NTP at boot:
systemctl disable fake-hwclock

12. Disable Bluetooth, as we need the UART for GPS:
echo dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt >> /boot/config.txt
echo enable_uart=1 >> /boot/config.txt
echo dtoverlay=pps-gpio,gpiopin=18 >> /boot/config.txt
systemctl disable hciuart
apt -y purge bluez bluez-firmware

13. Set maximum performance for consistent timing:
sed -i "s|$| nohz=off|" /boot/cmdline.txt
systemctl disable ondemand
echo 'GOVERNOR="performance"' > /etc/default/cpufrequtils

14. Install software:
apt update
apt -y dist-upgrade
apt -y install cpufrequtils gpsd gpsd-clients ntp pps-tools

15. Configure gpsd:

sed -i 's|DEVICES="|\0/dev/ttyAMA0 /dev/pps0|' \
    /etc/default/gpsd
sed -i 's|GPSD_OPTIONS="|\0-n|' /etc/default/gpsd
mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/ntp.service.d
cat >/etc/systemd/system/ntp.service.d/gpsd.conf <<EOF
[Unit]
After=gpsd.service
Wants=gpsd.service
EOF
mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/gpsd.service.d
cat >/etc/systemd/system/gpsd.service.d/stationary.conf <<EOF
[Service]
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/gpsctl -t 'u-blox' -b -x '\\\\x06\\\\x24\\\\xFF\\\\xFF\\\\x02\\\\x03\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x10\\\\x27\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x05\\\\x00\\\\xFA\\\\x00\\\\xFA\\\\x00\\\\x64\\\\x00\\\\x2C\\\\x01\\\\x00\\\\x3C\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00\\\\x00' \$DEVICES
EOF

16. Configure ntp
cat >/etc/ntp.conf <<EOF
# /etc/ntp.conf, configuration for ntpd; see ntp.conf(5) for help

driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
leapfile /usr/share/zoneinfo/leap-seconds.list

statsdir /var/log/ntpstats/
statistics loopstats peerstats clockstats
filegen loopstats file loopstats type day enable
filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable
filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable

# Specify one or more NTP servers.

# Stratum 0 (GPS)
server 127.127.28.2 minpoll 1 maxpoll 1 prefer
fudge 127.127.28.2 refid PPS

# Use servers from the NTP Pool Project. Approved by Ubuntu Technical Board
# on 2011-02-08 (LP: #104525). See http://www.pool.ntp.org/join.html for
# more information.
pool 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst preempt
pool 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst preempt
pool 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst preempt
pool 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org iburst preempt

# Use Ubuntu's ntp server as a fallback.
pool ntp.ubuntu.com preempt

server 127.127.28.0 noselect
fudge 127.127.28.0 time1 0 refid GPS

# Access control configuration; see /usr/share/doc/ntp-doc/html/accopt.html
# for details. This page might also be helpful:
# http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/AccessRestrictions
#
# Note that "restrict" applies to both servers and clients, so a configuration
# that might be intended to block requests from certain clients could also end
# up blocking replies from your own upstream servers.

# By default, exchange time with everybody, but don't allow configuration.
restrict -4 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery limited
restrict -6 default kod notrap nomodify nopeer noquery limited

# Local users may interrogate the ntp server more closely.
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict ::1

# Needed for adding pool entries
restrict source notrap nomodify noquery
EOF

17. Reboot:
reboot

18. Resize the filesystem:
sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

19. Check that things look right:
ntpq -p

20. Wait ~24 hours for everything to stabilize. You want to allow for the drift to be calculated. Once the PPS offset is tiny (e.g. 0.010 or so), you know things are good.

21. At this point, wait for midnight to roll around so the stats are rotated. Then wait at least another 4 hours.

22. Calculate the correct offset for the GPS serial data:

awk '/(SHM\(0\)|127\.127\.28\.0/ { sum -= $5 ; cnt++; } END { print sum / cnt; }' /var/log/ntpstats/peerstats

23. Add that value from the GPS’s time1 in /etc/ntp.conf. If this is the first time you’re doing it, the existing value is zero, so just use it directly.

24. Restart ntp:
sudo systemctl ntp restart

25. The offset on the GPS line should now be less than 3 or so. You can repeat steps 21 through 24 if want to try to get closer.

26. Remove noselect from the GPS line in /etc/ntp.conf:
sudo vi /etc/ntp.conf

27. Restart ntp:
sudo systemctl ntp restart

Sources:

Posted on

ISP Traffic Prioritization

This was originally posted as a Slashdot comment. It discusses the idea of prioritizing traffic in an ISP environment, ideally using markings generated by the customers.

I do network engineering at an ISP. We are small, though I have discussed these things with my peers at larger networks.

Once you scale above a very small network (like your home connection), allowing congestion isn’t really okay in practice, even with QoS. When I say it’s not “okay” here, I’m speaking purely technically.

It might be possible to let networks congest somewhat if you had a large amount of elastic traffic that you could reliably identify. Netflix, for example, could meet these criteria. But that’s not okay politically; that’s an example of why net neutrality is good!

QoS in carrier networks is only useful for priority (de-)queuing of traffic to reduce latency and jitter. For example, real-time voice or video traffic could benefit. This is where it’d be nice to actually be able to honor user traffic markings.

It’s not (currently at least) practical to make the decisions on a flow-by-flow basis in the core of the network (which is what your proposal would require). This is a hardware scaling issue. To be clear, tracking flows statistically is okay at scale. ISPs do plenty with NetFlow/sFlow. But taking an incoming packet, assigning it to a flow, and marking it appropriately, for every packet, in real time is the scaling challenge.

The following approach would scale perfectly in trusted CPE (ONT/cable modem) or reasonably well in a DSLAM (for DSL). Give each user (for example) two queues. Honor the incoming DSCP markings. Put a small, but reasonable, limit on the size of the priority queue; overflowing traffic gets remarked and placed into the non-priority queue. Then, honor markings through the rest of the network.

There are a few problems with even this approach. First off, there are going to be users who legitimately create more high priority traffic than any limit that’s acceptable across the board. Is it okay to charge them for a higher limit? If not, how do you avoid gaming the system? If yes, won’t that incentivize ISPs to set the limit to zero and charging for all priority? Is that okay? If so, what fraction of people will request and pay for priority in that world? Will that be enough to encourage application developers to mark traffic appropriately? Or does this just degrade into our current zero-priority Internet?

Second, this only gets you one direction (upload). To handle the download direction, you’d need to honor priority bits on your upstream and peering links. But there, you can’t trust the markings (unless it’s a 1:1 peering link and you are guaranteed your peer implements a compatible policy at their incoming edge), at least without policing. Policing the queues there is easy, but gives you terrible results in real life. If the limit is exceeded with traffic that “should not have been” marked priority, it will destroy the prioritization of “legitimate” priority flows by forcing some fraction of their packets into the non-priority queue. If you accept all (or just a high enough fraction of) incoming traffic as priority traffic, then you have destroyed the prioritization yourself. If you try to mark flows per IP/customer, we’re back to that scaling problem.

It might be possible to do something that involves tracking flows at the customer edge and using the incoming markings for the downstream direction. But this is only prioritizing in the last mile. At best, this is a lot of work for very little benefit.