PhD CPA Assistant Professor at @TCU. Argues with people who agree with me. Official Matt. All views are my own. (He/Him) @ menzer on the other one
Joined July 2010
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Just putting this here for future reference anytime someone says: "but I have never been audited on it"
#taxtwitter
AICPA SSTS 2.1.8(a)
Tyler Menzer retweeted
All of these countries have access to the same LLMs.
This raises the likelihood that what’s behind the US productivity boost is less about AI-augmented task productivity & more about something else like mechanical AI capex effects… or something besides AI entirely.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Tyler Menzer retweeted
Really love how my @FedEx driver now routinely pretends I'm not home so he/she doesn't have to drive up my driveway and deliver my wine when I'm definitely home 😔
One thing people should ask themselves is which group do you fall into, and then ask which group the person they are trying to convince falls into.
The arguments to convince an A are very different than the arguments to convince a B/C!
The original PS 2003 saga also continues with problems in the second half of their chart (1960-present). A few months ago Vincent and I released a replication and update of their full series, which found more denominator problems in the PS original - especially after 1986.
As with their other work, these errors exaggerated inequality levels from the 1980s-present.
So...in this world Peter is imagining...Democrats first get rid of the filibuster THEN, the Republican President Donald Trump works with Dems to pass a large tax rate hike in the next two years?
Honestly the most annoying part of both PSZ AND their critics is that everyone talks as if measuring income is a simple thing we can just go look up the number for.
Every single calculation has considerable assumptions required that have no single right answer.
1/
The reason PSZ are able to withstand criticism is because its not right or wrong, its trying to convince someone that your noisy messy choice/adjustment is better than their noisy messy choice.
Thats much harder!
Reading write-ups like this should give outsiders a good idea of why these things are hard
xitter.gq/samthorpe__/status/211…
I'm especially invested in this debate because in 2023 (with Bill Gale and John Sabelhaus) I spent weeks evaluating the assumptions made by PSZ and Auten/Splinter and writing them up for the public. Economists have spent years researching these issues. brookings.edu/articles/measu…
Tyler Menzer retweeted
It's not that hard to find simple prompts that help learn as opposed to create slop:
Tyler Menzer retweeted
1. AI should play a large role before we see anything from anyone so it comes out right in the first place.
2. AI should play a big role in retrospective replications.
3. Piketty-Saez-Zucman work has many flaws that all go one direction.
Spreading slop hurts all three causes.
Tyler Menzer retweeted
I agree with others who have said that this isn’t the right approach.
1 This was apparently unvetted and experts have said that the AI output was low quality.
2 The appearance of selectively using AI against advocates of politically charged policies on social media is bad.
Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Many people have valid criticisms of SZ, but something sits poorly with me here. An anonymous website, very limited information on prompts, data, etc, and suddenly broadcast by a popular blog...Is this really how we want Econ research to move forward?
marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Everyone knows my priors, and they are not particularly kind. Nonetheless, this should not be taken too seriously. AI is not good at making this kind of assessment, and we don’t know what the prompt was.
Some of the “errors” are actually criticisms raised in papers published after the ones analyzed, which is the normal process of science.
This is not the right way to criticize each other.
I think I will emphasize the following: the AI flags alot of issues I dont think are issues of great importance in the sense that they speak to reasonable assumptions that might differ (this is why I said initially I didnt buy the numbers). Second, the AI (however) gets the concept right. The decisions of PS always point to higher inequality. This is consistent with my own work showing that out of 25 data decisions, 22 went the way of overestimating inequality in PS and PSZ (their DINA stuff).
But the AI misses alot of those 25 issues (I think it actually gets none).
Tyler Menzer retweeted
Careful. Looking at just a few of the papers I know well here, this "audit" seems to be to be mostly BS - and I say that as someone whose views are about as opposed to S-Z as you can find in the profession
Tyler Menzer retweeted
i am not a fan of political dirty tricks, and the people who were involved in this ought to be ashamed of themselves
Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot
Operatives aligned with Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, spent months recruiting candidates to peel votes from Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican, by @Kellen_Browning for @nytimes.
In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.
The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.
The staffer complied, combing through voter records to produce a list of Dan Sullivans from across the state.
This was no random request. Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state’s Republican senator. And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state’s unusual, four-person ballot.
The plan worked. This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan.
