Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I'm really am not sure why it is that the rules have all of a sudden been changed for Hillary.
Jessie Jackson fought all the way to the primary with half the delegates of the front runner.
Jackson made two runs - in 1984, and 1988. The world in general, and the political world, is a bit different these days. The phrase "don't fight to the convention, give it up now for the party" now has a lot more weight than it used to in American politics.
It used to be that these things were still actually decided at the convention, in a smoky back room.
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Ah OK. In that case, I suspect the relevant figure from 2003/4 is:
Housing remained the largest component of household spending, accounting for 24 cents in every dollar spent. Average weekly expenditure on housing was $217 in 2003/04, up 19.1 percent from $182 in 2000/01.
Still not particularly useful, as we should be comparing the mortgage costs and incomes of those people that have mortgages, not those that don't.
While this data isn't matched in the survey results, presumably they still have the raw data, where it would be easy to limit the data set to that group.
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So, if one person rented, one person had a mortgage and another person owned their house free-hold, then the average rent and the average mortgage would be much lower - but it would be useful, in that it reflected the average expenditure on housing.
So I don't get then how you can make this comment:
Why is this a problem? Because the latter includes those who don't have a mortgage, such as those who don't have a mortgage because they can't afford one. So he included people who can't afford a mortgage in the averages, and the numbers show that the average family – woah – can't afford a mortgage.
Isn't it a contradiction to bag Hickey for including people who don't have a mortgage, and then support Christopher for include people who have already paid off their home, in the average mortgage?
How can it be useful to say "Hey look, mortgages are only $81/week, everyone can afford that", when clearly mortgages aren't $81/week. Surely the useful figure is the $247 from the HES, which should be compared with the income of houses that have mortgages?
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Kyle, I'm sorry but that's how the results in the household expenditure survey are reported
I'm not sure where you're getting your figures from. The HES for year ended 30 June 2004 is available here. The section on 'Housing Group' reads:
Housing remained the largest component of household spending, accounting for 24 cents in every dollar spent. Average weekly expenditure on housing was $217 in 2003/04, up 19.1 percent from $182 in 2000/01.
Households owning their own house with a mortgage, spent 16.7 percent more on mortgage payments in 2003/04 than in 2000/01. These households spent on average $247 per week on mortgage payments in 2003/04, compared with $212 per week in 2000/01. Mortgage payments include mortgage-interest payments, mortgage-principal repayments and interest on revolving credit mortgage/loans.
For households that rented, average weekly household expenditure on rent increased by 10 percent, to $185 in 2003/04. Rent payments accounted for 25 percent of the total average weekly expenditure of households who pay rent.
Nothing in there comes even close to what you said originally:
on average, weekly household expenditure on mortgages was $81.40 in 03/04 (average rental expenditure was $58) - far below Hickey's assumed average mortgage of $225/week.
Indeed $247 is higher than Hickey's assumed average mortgage of $225/week.
The 2007 HES is also on the site, if you were looking for more up-to-date figures.
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Both measures are averages Kyle, so you could say that the average household expenditure on shelter was rent+mortgage=$139/week. This might seem low but remember 37% of households live rent or mortgage free.
Well that makes it an incredibly useless statistic then.
The majority of people who don't pay rent, own their homes. They're in the mortgage column. You can't say that average rent is only $58/week, because two-thirds of the people pay no rent, because they pay a mortgage. And vice versa.
That's saying "the average rent paid by everyone in the country, including those people who don't pay any at all, is $XX". What good is that?
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This isn't the same as supporting taggers, but it did occasion this spectacularly revolting statement from the Sensible Sentencing Trust, in which Garth McVicar declared that "her comments are hugely provocative at a time when a decent hard working citizen is facing a murder charge because of his frustration over this issue."
I'm going to state the obvious, in thinking that he faces the murder charge because he stabbed someone with a knife and they died, rather than, he got frustrated.
Frustration leads to high blood pressure, not 10 - 15 in jail.
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Keith's main point is correct: on average, weekly household expenditure on mortgages was $81.40 in 03/04 (average rental expenditure was $58) - far below Hickey's assumed average mortgage of $225/week.
Those figures can't be right. $81/week on a mortgage must be... $60 - 70K mortgage or so at lower (03/04) interest rates. Seems like a very low mortgage to take out on a house in most parts of the country.
But $58/week rental expenditure for a household? That wouldn't rent you a room in most places in NZ in 03/04, let alone an actual house.
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I hope someone writes the book on citizen-media creators' role in this election, what the links between the bloggers and the campaigns really are, and to what extent bloggers and posters are campaign surrogates, as opposed to fired-up citizens.
There was a guy on... Wednesday's The Daily Show - on here on Thursday - who had written the book on the topic in general - starting with Howard Dean, and including the current primary campaigns, though not to their conclusion of course. Sounded fairly sensible from the interview.
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Venezuela's rock embedded oil is estimated to be as much volume as Saudi Arabia had to begin with. So oil is more expensive (and how!) but now more plentiful than ever.
It's not more plentiful. It takes umpteen thousand years to make oil. Just that more of it is viable to extract financially.
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The lawyer who brought the witness might use 'Dr' lots. Helps build up that impression of authority with the jury.
"Dr Whatshisname, in your expert opinion, is the accused the only person that could have...", "Dr Whatshisname, in your extensive research in this field, is there any other explanation for..." etc.