-
IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Talking Politics
- Thread starter Legends of 2017
- Start date
jayfox said:
The percentage of household income on average being paid on home loans during the 17-18% days was actually lower than the equivalent % of hoeshold income today.
People are now employed where I work without penalties. They start 30 minutes later so penalty rates are not given.
Only desperate people would work for the meagre wage that is on offer for those positions.
Statistics. I love 'em.
If the % of household income devoted to housing is at an all time high, then it follows that the % of all non housing expenditure (food, clothing, etc) is at an all time low. Because the TOTAL expenditure must add up to 100% (excluding net savings).
So on the one hand, Howard should be condemned for making housing costs more expensive, and yet on the other hand, he should be congratulated for making everything else cheaper.
This is the trouble with statistics. They can twisted to suit any political argument. Hence I ignore them. And politicians.
If the % of household income devoted to housing is at an all time high, then it follows that the % of all non housing expenditure (food, clothing, etc) is at an all time low. Because the TOTAL expenditure must add up to 100% (excluding net savings).
So on the one hand, Howard should be condemned for making housing costs more expensive, and yet on the other hand, he should be congratulated for making everything else cheaper.
This is the trouble with statistics. They can twisted to suit any political argument. Hence I ignore them. And politicians.
jayfox said:
no they wouldn't jayfox. 17% of 200K is 34K, 8% of 500K is 40K, (todays money by the way) thats the point, yes Pop you can play with stats as you say, but the simple fact TD stated is correct. Interest rates may be lower but houses are harder to buy.
tigersnake said:
Thanks for the glorious insight into my parents financial situation and likelyhood of them still owning their property, but I'm afraid that you have the figures completely wrong. If you read my post, I said that they were paying back $200,000 in interest every year, not that they owed $200,000. They owed over $1 million. If interest rates were at 8% instead of 20% they would have been paying $120,000 per year less in interest. Certainly enough for them to have been able to stay at their property. THAT is a fact.
Using today's figures is misleading too, as in our situation, had interest rates been at 8%, they would've been able to pay off most of their loan by now and would have a property worth a considerable amount more!
Also, it's all relative, isn't it. Houses are more expensive than they've ever been but wages are also higher than they've ever been.
jayfox said:
but pound for pound, they are more expesive, even taking into account higher wages, thats the point, housing affordability is lower. Hence Howard's 'interest rate scaremongering doesn't wash.
I'm sorry that your folks lost their house foxy, honest. I can't imagine what that would be like and I empathise.
I still have a problem with the implication, maybe you didn't mean to imply it I don't know, that high interest rates were Labors fault. It was a raft of complex social and economic factors. Your hypothetical scenario maybe true, but hypothetical scenarios, especially ones completely out of context, are pointless. I'f I bought a house I seriously considered buying in 1999 I'd be able to retire now.
I still have a problem with the implication, maybe you didn't mean to imply it I don't know, that high interest rates were Labors fault. It was a raft of complex social and economic factors. Your hypothetical scenario maybe true, but hypothetical scenarios, especially ones completely out of context, are pointless. I'f I bought a house I seriously considered buying in 1999 I'd be able to retire now.
It seems the government have prepared a draft of softened-up IR laws just in case polling doesn't turn around, based on amnedments proposed by assemblies of god senator Steve Fielding. So much for a government believing strongly in something, especially since the effects of the laws haven't lived up to the union scare campaigns.
mld said:
He has a dangerous amount of power for a member of the extreme religious right. One of your mates, Liverpool?
Gypsy__Jazz said:
I'm neither "extreme religious" nor "extreme right"....so... ???
However, considering all the hullabaloo from lefties and unions regarding these IR-laws, and that I asked a question "How have the new IR laws affected YOU?"......I really haven't read any posts showing that the posters on this forum (which would have a good cross-section of different age groups, careers, and positions) have been demonised by these new laws as the lefties/unions have made out in their scare campaigns.
This is where I am glad that the ALP does have a (self-confessed by ALP voters out there) an "articulate and educated" leader, as even he is keeping his distance from the unions on this one.
Sure, he has to show that he'll do something to keep the "Joe Citizen" on the production line happy enough for them to vote him in, but like Howard, he is smart enough to know that the unions are full of sh!t, and that these IR laws are not as bad as what the unions, and a desperate Kim Beazley, made out.
Therefore, the problem Rudd has, is that he may be TOO smart, to be an ALP man....
Unions push Rudd on IR policy
Misha Schubert, Katharine Murphy and Meaghan Shaw
April 4, 2007
UNION bosses have put federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd on notice that they want a tougher industrial relations policy in place before this month's national party conference.
Senior union leaders are pushing Mr Rudd to include explicit commitments in the party's platform on issues such as unfair dismissal and workplace agreements, rather than the general principles it has now.
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union national secretary John Sutton said the current platform was "utterly inappropriate". He said: "We'd all like to see more meat on the bone at conference."
The rising pressure on Mr Rudd and his deputy, Julia Gillard, came as new figures revealed unions are themselves under threat, with a dramatic slump in union membership despite an intense one-year campaign against the WorkChoices workplace laws.
Only one in five workers belong to a union in their main job, the Bureau of Statistics says.
Mr Rudd's relationship with unions is more distant than that of former opposition leader Kim Beazley, and this is feeding a push to propel ACTU secretary Greg Combet into Parliament to stop Labor from "backsliding" on industrial-relations policy. Union officials worry that Mr Rudd may try to soften Labor's policy before this year's federal election if the platform is not specific on key issues. Polling shows IR will be a key issue.
Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard dug in their heels on IR policy yesterday, insisting that Labor's platform would remain a general statement of principle. They want the flexibility to make detailed policy announcements in coming months, with the first emerging possibly before the Labor conference, from April 27 to 29.
Mr Rudd was blunt yesterday about demands for specifics. "People from the unions can say what they like, (but) I'll determine the timing of that," he told ABC radio.
Ms Gillard, Labor's workplace spokeswoman, was also firm.
"I am being very clear that the platform is the framework document," she said.
Unions want watertight commitments written into the platform: to scrap Australian Workplace Agreements, the Office of the Employment Advocate and the enforcement agency set up after the Cole Royal Commission on the building industry.
If the push for specifics fails, unions from the right and left are prepared to move resolutions from the conference floor.
The heads of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association and Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union all supported calls for more detail in the ALP platform.
Mr Sutton said: "We want a very explicit commitment from Labor that they will shut down the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner. One hundred million dollars is the three-year expenditure on this Gestapo squad. I am confident that Labor has better ways to spend that money."
The ABS data shows union membership fell in the year to last August from 1.9 million to 1.8 million. The proportion of workers who are union members fell from 22 per cent to 20 per cent of the workforce and to just 15 per cent in the private sector.
Workplace Minister Joe Hockey said the data showed the unions' real motive for their anti-WorkChoices campaign was to recruit members. But ACTU president Sharan Burrow said the figures were not surprising, given the laws' intent to remove workers' rights to union help.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/unions-push-rudd-on-ir-policy/2007/04/03/1175366241079.html
The Labour Party have moved so far on so many policies that they no longer representant a textbook leftist party. They are now a soft right or what the Libs were a long time ago. THis has allowed the Libs to push further right.
Rudd needs to push away from this IR battle, he cannot win on that platform.
Rudd needs to push away from this IR battle, he cannot win on that platform.
SCOOP said:
This move to the Right has been happening for years. Its one of the reasons why the Greens have polled well in recent fed elections. They fill the void left by the centre moving ALP.
Hey Pesto! said:
Tend to agree more with Scoop, Pesto. The ALP aren't centre moving. They have already passed that. :'(
Green for me. I refuse to vote for Another Liberal Party.
Gypsy__Jazz said:
The ALP has been a major disappointment for years. They have stopped trying to offer a viable opposition and have tended to mimic the Libs' policies, with one or two trendy differences.
SCOOP said:
Agree on the first bit, totally disagree on the second.
Won't be on that alone though. Liberals being ideologically driven, backwards looking and extreme on big issues like working conditions, education and especially the environment, has given the ALP plenty to work with.
