
Show HN: How Obama's budget proposal affects you (Weekend Hack) - snikolic
http://www.howmuchmorewillmytaxesbe.com/
======
DanielBMarkham
My concern here is that, although you are relating simple facts, you are also
making a political statement. To see what I mean, let's say I wrote an app
"See how many dollars of debt your elected representative approved" Even
though it may all be based on publicly-available data, there would instantly
be a conversation around "was this a vote for debt or was the expense offset"
and "was it a one-time vote or was it an entitlement" or "Did he vote against
it before he voted for it" and so on. That's because you can take the same
data and present it in vastly different contexts. Heck, that's what politics
is all about. I know you mean well and are not trying to spin me. It's just
that "how Obama's budget will affect you" can be done a lot of different ways,
all with different impacts on the user.

There's also an issue of timeliness -- things are moving faster on the ground,
and all of your hard work could be for nothing just in a few day's time.

Happy to upvote you, though! Hope you got some good experience from it. But I
also hope this doesn't start a trend of quick hacks that are really more
political commentary than useful. Heck, I already knew that the rates would
change and that "millionaires and billionaires" now officially starts at 200K
per year.

~~~
snikolic
Thanks for the upvote!

I agree with you. There's a bit of bias in all of this, and no matter how
objective I try to be (or don't), I'm inherently making a political statement.
Most political issues are way too complex to summarize with a website that
spits out a binary answer in a giant font. It's dangerous to even try.

On the other hand, I think it's a travesty that our system is so opaque to its
own constituents. I'm upset at how difficult it was for me to find a simple
datapoint about a widely discussed and hot political issue - namely, what
happens to my taxes? I'm still not 100% sure I've got the datapoint correct,
either.

This is tricky: We lack information. Information isn't digestible by most
folks unless it's in easily consumable soundbites and datapoints. But
incomplete information, or information without context, might be just as
dangerous as no information at all. So where do we start?

I have no idea, but it's been fun seeing some strangers tweet my site around.

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snikolic
I was wading through opaque news and wikipedia articles to figure out how
Obama's budget proposal would affect me, and I decided to make a Saturday
afternoon public service project out of my findings. A nice change of pace
from working on <http://flock.fm>. :-)

Any feedback (UI, technical, tax code clarification, etc.) would be
appreciated, although this was a rushed little project.

Disclaimer: This is my best interpretation of tax code...my numbers could be
wrong!

~~~
bostonOU
Looks cool, especially for a weekend hack. The design is very well done.

~~~
snikolic
Thank you!

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beatpanda
You should support commas, decimals, and dollar signs in the taxable income
allowed. Keeping statistics for how many people using the tool would actually
be affected might also be a useful exercise.

~~~
snikolic
Thanks for the feedback!

I'm updating the site right now to strip dollar signs out of the input. Commas
and periods are a bit trickier, and something I hesitated about for a long
time. Given that I was trying to get this done in just a few hours, I got lazy
and decided to simply throw an alert message if someone uses punctuation. I'm
about to update the alert message to make it a bit clearer, since this might
be a more common issue than I anticipated.

To keep development fast/simple, I decided against any backend recording of
people's data. However, Google Analytics will probably be able to give some
high-level statistics...I'll be sure to share the info if it's interesting!

~~~
dkokelley
Data about the inputs will be worthless. I went once saying that I did not
make more than $200k last year, and then got curious and did it again, several
more times with different numbers. I can't say everyone will be as curious as
I was about the numbers, but I would imagine that several people will want to
see what someone who made $1,000,000 would have to pay extra in taxes.

~~~
snikolic
You're totally right.

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nodata
Cool. But I can't use the website on a laptop with a 1366x768 screen: the
buttons aren't visible. I can't scroll to them. (If I push F11 I can see
them.)

~~~
snikolic
Updated the site with a few tweaks...better?

~~~
ljf
Still doesn't work for my netbook since your tweak. 8.9inch screen - 1024 x
600 - doubt many use a laptop this small!

Cheers, nice site, great idea.

~~~
snikolic
I lied...I didn't actually fix the problem, because I didn't upload the
correct version of the file, because I'm not using proper version control.
Color me embarrassed.

Is it better now?

~~~
ljf
Perfect, thanks ;)

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grantlmiller
call me a libertarian but a budget that refuses to address the serious issues
that drive spending (entitlements, defense etc) might not affect my direct tax
liability, but it still supports a system that devalues the money the
government does not take from me every 2 weeks.

~~~
cjoh
Problem isn't what gov spends its money on, but how it spends its money:
<http://infovegan.com/2010/11/02/how-vs-what>

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hammock
Nice site. I had to step back about 3 feet from my monitor just so I could
read the damn thing, though. Larger doesn't always = easier to read.

~~~
snikolic
Just shrunk the fonts slightly.

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breckinloggins
I like it. Small nitpick: back button doesn't work. Might try implementing the
pushState API or use a hack.

~~~
cedsav
another nitpick, use the 'label' tag and the 'for' attribute with your yes/no
radio buttons to make them easier to select.

~~~
snikolic
Fair nitpick. :-)

I'll update the page in a few minutes with these fixes.

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joshaidan
If it's possible, I think it would be interesting for the purposes of
discussion to also include the amount you are currently paying in taxes, in
order to calculate your net tax amount. In other words, show what your take
home pay would be under the new plan.

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fexl
Hey aren't they talking about raising the cap on Social Security and Medicare
taxes too?

~~~
snikolic
Yeah, it's way more complicated than this. SS, Medicare, payroll taxes, estate
taxes, etc. are all part of the proposal. I just wanted to focus on income tax
for this project - I think your average joe can most easily understand income
taxes (and probably complains about them most often).

Also, because there are only so many hours of my life I'm willing to spend
deciphering tax law.

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kbob
Minor usability critique: It wasn't clear from the wording whether you meant
personal income or family income at the first question. It appears that you
meant family taxable income.

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MaxGabriel
I like the use of "We" and "our" in the disclaimer--a nice touch that makes
you sound a lot bigger than one person

(Currently under the impression that its just Snikolic who made this)

~~~
snikolic
Actually, it's the other way around. I've been been falsely answering all of
the posts here on HN in the first person. The site was really built by a "we".

Robert (not an HN member, sadly) is a designer, and my co-founder at
<http://www.flock.fm>. We were bored of working on Flock on Saturday, started
talking politics, and took a few hours to whip this up together.

~~~
rmatteso
A member now, apparently! Thought it was worth chiming in. I think it's safe
to say that the site has a bias - but we're not claiming otherwise. This is as
much activism as journalism - though I believe the facts we present are
correct. Personally, I'm biased in favor of education and discourse - and I'm
pleased that some has been generated by my and snikolic's efforts.

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georgieporgie
Great site. The complaints of political bias are just silly. You're putting
numbers into an accessible form. If people find political bias in running
numbers, that's their problem. As for the "relieved?" _everyone_ in _every_
camp is currently anxious about taxation and the budget, so it's quite
reasonable.

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olalonde

        Obama's budget proposal won't increase your income tax liability.
        Relieved? Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on.
    

This is quite insulting to supporters of individual freedom, as if all we care
about is not to get taxed.

What if I did a similar website asking:

    
    
        Did you murder someone in the past year? 
        No? 
        Obama's proposal to sentence all murderers to death won't affect you. 
        Relieved? Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on.

~~~
snikolic
I see your point, and I'll admit I was a little uneasy about throwing that
line in...it can certainly be interpreted as a bias. My designer and I were
just looking for a witty and ever-so-slightly incendiary phrase to use as a
call to action. I apologize...guess it's a bit more incendiary than we
planned.

On the other hand: 1) I think your analogy is flawed, and kind of extreme. 2)
Hypothetical tax policy proposed by a democratically elected representative is
most certainly not an attack on personal freedom. (Taxes levied by a despot
would be.) 3) The "Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on" phrase is a
direct response to the rhetorical "Relieved?". It's merely a call to action
for those who are relieved by Obama's budget proposal and its direct effects
on their tax liabilities.

~~~
jessriedel
Totally agree that you can throw whatever political commentary you want on
this site; it's your project to have fun with, and you don't need to
apologize. But as long as we're going off-topic and into politics...

>tax policy proposed by a democratically elected representative is most
certainly not an attack on personal freedom.

Couldn't disagree more! It's better than a despot, but tyranny by the majority
can definitely be an attack on personal freedom. If the white-majority-held
congress voted to take all the property of some racial minority and divide it
amongst white people, the fact that it was democratic wouldn't make it right!

And to be more provocative: reasonable people can disagree on whether the same
is true if you replace "white" with "middle class" and "racial minority" with
"rich". It's all going to depend on your personal moral/political philosophy.

~~~
snikolic
Thanks for the support!

I agree; you're right that tyranny by majority is an attack on personal
freedom...but that's a structural failing of our democracy. I think it's a bit
unfair to connect systemic faults of a society and government to a specific
budget proposal.

