Liberals stuffing up Australia

[Tannin]

[Tannin]

[1061]

Then the average wage is an inflated LIE!

[Tannin]

Exactly!

The mean wage (what statistical idiots call the "average" wage) is roughly $72,000, but nearly everyone gets far less than this (around $43,000 is the average). Roughly one quarter get the "average" (arithmetical mean) wage or higher. Roughly three quarters get less. *

In fairness, I should note that the mean wage, though it's a gross abuse of statistical honesty in most contexts, still has some uses so long as its limitations and tendency to mislead are understood. For example, if you are a worker employed by Ford (say), you are probably interested in the correct average wage that Ford workers like you take home, which is the median. This tells you far more about how well off you and most of your fellow employees are than the mean would. If, on the other hand, you are Mr Henry Ford, you probably don't much care about individual workers, you only care about the total payout for all of them (which is the amount you spend). So in your case (as Mr Ford), the mean will probably be more useful. Notice that in this second case, Mr Ford is really interested in the total. He's not really using the mean as an indicator of central tendency, he's using it as a proxy for total cost.

Similarly, Coles cares about the mean spend per shopper. They don't care if they get $50 from lots of people and $500 from a few, or whether they get $150 from everyone, just so long as they get the total they want. As a shopper, though, you probably care about the median spend, as that gives you a far better indication of how big a grocery bill you can expect.

(As a matter of detail, Coles actually goes way further than this: they spend millions of dollars a year on very sophisticated analysis of your shopping habits right down to an individual level, and use that data to target ways to extract more from you. This is why they love their Fly Buys program. They are happy to give a bit of stuff away because the data they extract about you, on average, more than makes up for that small cost. Woolies does the same of course.)

__________________________________________________

* Not a precise figure! There are all sorts of assumptions and choices involved in the calculation of this sort of figure. Are we including unemployed people or not? What about part-timers? Are we looking at just wages or all income including benefits, director's fees, self-funded super, interest, rent and dividends? Are we calculating on a per-person or a per-household basis? And so on, endlessly. I've used three-quarters as a reasonable middle ground figure but you can easily find numbers anywhere between two-thirds and four-fifths. As always, the devil is in the detail.

[think positive]

[Culprit]

Get the lube out and get prepared to be screwed. This is Rich V Poor now. Australians finally may change their apathetic attitude and actually start jumping up and down.

You cannot run a Country like a business and these clowns think you can. Starving your family for a month so you can scream that you have a budget surplus is just plain stupid.

The LNP will sell everything off to their rich mates to expand their business interests and simply follow the Jeff Kennet plan and those in Victoria are all seeing the ramifications of that.

[Dark Beanie]

Yep, once you sell off the farm, very hard to get it back.

Private is not always better.

[David]

Here's a basic summary. Tough times ahead, by the looks of things:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/commission-of-audit-report-key-points

[pietillidie]

All to satisfy completely fraudulent economic claims, no less.

People ought to be ripping the bastards to shreds over this; the arguments are absolute lies driven by ideological whackos and sadists who think the poor need to be punished for their sins.

There are no unicorns, fairies and bunyips. And there is no budget problem and never has been. Why people would let the apocalyptic David Koreshes of economics set policy for them is beyond me.

[Jezza]

[Tannin]

[Wokko]

What concerns me is that none of these reports tie these cutting back of government and services to less taxes. So far it's looking like the Cadbury block that is suddenly smaller but costs the same.

No point cutting government payments and services while maintaining or raising taxation levels. If people have to pay their own way on things, then government needs to get their hand out of their pants.

[stui magpie]

I love all the histrionics over the commission of audit report. People are behaving as though it's recommendations are draft legislation.

Lets wait and see what actually happens in the budget. Most of those recommendations will not get adopted at all, some will be adopted in part.

The whole reason for releasing the recommendations is so Hockey can come out of the budget looking like it could have been a lot worse.

[Tannin]

^ Gahh, how gullible are you?

Abbott appointed the "commission", Abbott set the terms, Abbott told it what to consider and when to report, the members are all Liberal Party members or fellow travelers from the same hard-right big business lobby Abbott himself belongs to. Abbott's repeated lie is that "this isn't a report by the government, it's a report to the govermnent", and it's palpable rubbish.

The contents of the report provide a chilling insight into the aims of the Abbott government.

[stui magpie]