Good Luck With That One
Mar. 2nd, 2023 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraWhen I wake up, I’m almost always in a jolly mood.
But then I think about the world.
This morning, it only took around five minutes to start feeling anxious.
###
The Ukraine War, as it's being fought now, is unwinnable. The West wins it when Putin drops dead (which has to happen sooner or later.) Russia wins it when the U.S. realizes they'd get a better return on their investment by setting fire to $130 billion in the Washington Mall and selling the resulting video to pay-per-view.
I feel for the individuals whose lives have been ruined by various politicians' delusions of manifest destiny—and that includes all of us.
###
And then there’s ChatGPT. Maybe that’s the personal edge to my anxiety: ChatGPT has the potential to make my remunerative gigs obsolete, although I’d guess that potential is still a good three years off from being realized, and in three years, a lot of other things can change.
But I think the Japanese have the right idea.
In 2022, there were only 800,000 births in the entire nation of Japan.
When you consider that the Japanese population is 126 million, that is a remarkable number.
Of course, one could say that what ChatGPT will do for writing, calculators did for solving math problems decades ago. There was great consternation in the ranks when calculators became commonplace, too. I remember it well! (I did high school calculus with a slide rule!)
###
Anyway…
Only one genuinely obnoxious client yesterday.
This is a guy whose 2022 return I’d done last week who returned to have his 2021 return amended because he forgot to put in for New York State’s tax credit in 2021.
He'd done the 2021 return himself.
Generally, we don’t amend returns that weren’t initially prepared by TaxBwana in the first place.
The process is just too laborious. It involves recreating the original tax return for our database by reentering every one of the original tax documents and then comparing that to the client’s unamended return—and then, if the numbers are off, you have to go back over what you’ve entered and try to recreate the client’s actual mistakes!
Once you’ve done that, you tackle the amendment.
The whole thing takes upwards of an hour and a half—longer in this client’s case because he was one of those assholes who never rolled over an IRA and thus had thirteen 1099-R statements from 2021 for me to enter.
But the appointment bookers made a mistake and gave him an appointment.
So, I started the work.
The entire time I was entering his forms, the guy kept sighing dramatically and drumming his fingers against the table and looking at his watch. “Look,” he told me. “I gotta go home and let the dog out to pee—”
I clucked sympathetically and nodded my head. “Too bad you scheduled this appointment on a day you had to let the dog out to pee! How expensive is your carpet anyway?”
“No offense, but can’t Marty do this?”
Marty is our site coordinator.
I sighed and shook my head. “Too bad you didn’t get Marty. Marty is so good that he just has to look at a tax return, and instantly it’s done! It’s an amazing superpower. Please keep that to yourself, though. We wouldn’t want it to get out because then people wouldn’t sign up to get their taxes done at any site but ours, and that would hurt all those other tax preparers’ feelings.”
Marty blushed bright red, and everyone else in the room burst into laughter.
Except my client. Who looked around suspiciously: Wait! Did someone make a joke?
“Well?” he demanded. “Can Marty do it?”
“’ Fraid not,” I said.
“Well, I think I’m gonna have to leave—”
Flo, our administrative assistant, booked him a return appointment for March 8th.
But when I was leaving the shopping mall where TaxBwana has set up its camp an hour later at 2:00 pm, guess who I saw? Trudging back to the TaxBwana site?
“I was in the neighborhood, so I figured someone could finish it up now—” he told me with a big ingratiating grin.
Good luck with that one, I thought.
But then I think about the world.
This morning, it only took around five minutes to start feeling anxious.
###
The Ukraine War, as it's being fought now, is unwinnable. The West wins it when Putin drops dead (which has to happen sooner or later.) Russia wins it when the U.S. realizes they'd get a better return on their investment by setting fire to $130 billion in the Washington Mall and selling the resulting video to pay-per-view.
I feel for the individuals whose lives have been ruined by various politicians' delusions of manifest destiny—and that includes all of us.
###
And then there’s ChatGPT. Maybe that’s the personal edge to my anxiety: ChatGPT has the potential to make my remunerative gigs obsolete, although I’d guess that potential is still a good three years off from being realized, and in three years, a lot of other things can change.
But I think the Japanese have the right idea.
In 2022, there were only 800,000 births in the entire nation of Japan.
When you consider that the Japanese population is 126 million, that is a remarkable number.
Of course, one could say that what ChatGPT will do for writing, calculators did for solving math problems decades ago. There was great consternation in the ranks when calculators became commonplace, too. I remember it well! (I did high school calculus with a slide rule!)
###
Anyway…
Only one genuinely obnoxious client yesterday.
This is a guy whose 2022 return I’d done last week who returned to have his 2021 return amended because he forgot to put in for New York State’s tax credit in 2021.
He'd done the 2021 return himself.
Generally, we don’t amend returns that weren’t initially prepared by TaxBwana in the first place.
The process is just too laborious. It involves recreating the original tax return for our database by reentering every one of the original tax documents and then comparing that to the client’s unamended return—and then, if the numbers are off, you have to go back over what you’ve entered and try to recreate the client’s actual mistakes!
Once you’ve done that, you tackle the amendment.
The whole thing takes upwards of an hour and a half—longer in this client’s case because he was one of those assholes who never rolled over an IRA and thus had thirteen 1099-R statements from 2021 for me to enter.
But the appointment bookers made a mistake and gave him an appointment.
So, I started the work.
The entire time I was entering his forms, the guy kept sighing dramatically and drumming his fingers against the table and looking at his watch. “Look,” he told me. “I gotta go home and let the dog out to pee—”
I clucked sympathetically and nodded my head. “Too bad you scheduled this appointment on a day you had to let the dog out to pee! How expensive is your carpet anyway?”
“No offense, but can’t Marty do this?”
Marty is our site coordinator.
I sighed and shook my head. “Too bad you didn’t get Marty. Marty is so good that he just has to look at a tax return, and instantly it’s done! It’s an amazing superpower. Please keep that to yourself, though. We wouldn’t want it to get out because then people wouldn’t sign up to get their taxes done at any site but ours, and that would hurt all those other tax preparers’ feelings.”
Marty blushed bright red, and everyone else in the room burst into laughter.
Except my client. Who looked around suspiciously: Wait! Did someone make a joke?
“Well?” he demanded. “Can Marty do it?”
“’ Fraid not,” I said.
“Well, I think I’m gonna have to leave—”
Flo, our administrative assistant, booked him a return appointment for March 8th.
But when I was leaving the shopping mall where TaxBwana has set up its camp an hour later at 2:00 pm, guess who I saw? Trudging back to the TaxBwana site?
“I was in the neighborhood, so I figured someone could finish it up now—” he told me with a big ingratiating grin.
Good luck with that one, I thought.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 04:09 pm (UTC)CSIS says the U.S. is funding 62% of the war: https://www.csis.org/analysis/aid-ukraine-explained-six-charts
(CSIS is widely reputed to be nonpartisan.)
Republicans in the States are increasingly against funding the Ukraine War. So, all it would take is a change of administrations in 2024 (which is far from an improbability.) In fact, it could happen even if the Democrats retain control of the Presidency if Republican anti-war sentiment is seen as a big threat to winning.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 04:47 pm (UTC)But there is an increasing possibility that they may not with smaller amounts of American financial aid.
I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, by the way. I feel for Ukrainians. On the other hand, Russians will not be crossing the Bering Strait any time soon, and it's not as though the U.S. doesn't have countless problems, many of which could be solved if some $$$ was thrown at them.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 07:11 pm (UTC)Re the Japan story, wow, yeah, I did see that that's the number being reported everywhere [ETA; after doubting you LIKE A FOOL]. That's just amazing. Unnerving.
Re: ChatGPT, I promise your job is safe for a good long while. I saw a tweet where someone asked one of those to write about a pound of feathers and a pound of lead, and it was doggedly arguing that two pounds of lead weighed as much as a pound of feathers or some such--I mean just plain, patently wrong nonsense.
... I think the grim future vis-à-vis AI is that most of us will be denied contact with actual flesh-and-blood humans unless we can pay top dollar. That's part of what's remarkable about your TaxBwana service. Not only that you provide it, but that you provide it in person--that's precious. Think how much you mean to the non-assholes... and to the assholes too, frankly. And so for that reason, there will be clients who want to have you write for them... even if ChatGPT eventually realizes that two pounds of lead weighs twice as much as a pound of feathers.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-03 12:28 am (UTC)I think my work is safe for at least a three-year horizon if for no other reason than because it would cost the people who employ me much more to customize an Economics-ChatPGT than it would to continue to contract with me! 😀
After that, who knows? I may not even want to do it anymore. I may win Lotto! One of my kids may win Lotto! I may be dead! One thing's for sure: The world will change in many, many ways because the rate of change seems to be faster and faster and faster.
What's happening in Japan is just mind-blowing.
I asked ChatGPT (!): Assuming the population of Japan continues to decline, what will the population of Japan be in 2060?
According to the latest projections, the population of Japan is expected to decrease to around 87 million by 2060, which is a decline of about 31% from the current population, it told me.
Wild!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2023-03-03 01:02 am (UTC)I guess neither of us is all that likely to be around to see if it's correct, but we can see if results in the next few years are on the slope.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-03 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-03 12:16 am (UTC)Military Keynesianism
Date: 2023-03-03 12:29 am (UTC)Re: Military Keynesianism
Date: 2023-03-03 12:42 am (UTC)Whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do depends on which Ukraine War narrative you believe.
In its present state, though, the war is unwinnable. Which makes it another Forever War.
On principle, I'm opposed to Forever Wars.