You say, “So if you’ve conceded there was no actual drop, you’ve conceded the whole argument. “ (3.08:38pm, 10/3) No, I have not “conceded” it. Now I know that last time I said I had not “conceded” something, you missed the point and said I was saying something completely different. So, I will explain it for you. As I never argued that there had been a drop in the real value of teacher pay at most levels (one level did show a drop), there is nothing to “concede”.

You say that you “can’t believe it took this long to prise that information out of” me you. You did not “prise it out of” me and it did not take long because I said it myself a fortnight ago. (2.51:15pm, 19/2)

You say that you “can expect a vague, rambling reply to something irrelevant.” No, that would be an expectation not based on any previous reply. You will get a reply that corrects point by point anything you have said that is untrue.

You say that I “find time to ignore questions” (3.10:39pm, 12/3). It is not necessary to “find” time to ignore questions. Ignoring them takes no time at all. However, I will repeat what I am doing, as you either have not understood or have not believed me on any previous occasion. My first priority is “to correct the untrue things you have said in response to me.” Now, it may be that you are used to people caving in to your demands, folding under abuse, crying with frustration at your errors, quivering when called names, running away when faced with bluster and bombast, etc. There is no reason I would do any of that. You have no power over me, and while it is tedious correcting you again and again, I am just stubborn enough to do it. If you really want to know what I think and you are not prepared to just let longweekend make up my thoughts for me, you will have to stop saying untrue things.

You make a relevant argument on choice, but that does not change the fact that you were wrong when you said that the education department makes the parents’ choice of schools for them. Students can go to any school they like that will take them, which is quite different from saying that they must go to the school chosen by the department. The issue of the practicalities of that choice is one thing (and we may even get around to discussing it);total absence of choice is another.

That leaves only your 12/3 claims re teacher pay for me to correct. So, we are almost at the point of discussing the issues you keep saying you want to discuss. Of course, we reached this point before (9.35:15am, 4/3), and you came back with more untruthful statements (1.55:21pm, 4/3…), so I am not expecting we will actually get to any issues after my next response.

Actually, a remark like “teachers have, AT BEST, had small increases in the purchasing power of their salaries over the last 36 years” does little to suggest that you don’t think there has been a salary decrease… if you’d written “at worst” (eg, the opposite of what you wrote) then it would have suggested that. It’s such a laughable position to be honest, if you never thought there had been a salary decrease in real terms then you were wasting everyone’s time by posting all those (bad) stats on real wage drops. But I’m not going to encourage you to continue this, since you now concede there hasn’t been a salary decrease. Let’s move on to what you actually are willing to argue for, a “relative drop”. And in your 4 recent posts you say… nothing about why MAWOTE is relevant… nothing at all. Shocking of course.

I’ll ask again, as per my earlier example: why should Joe get more money because of what happened in an unrelated industry? What is the REASON a relative drop MATTERS AT ALL? If you’re not going to defend it, then you posted all those MAWOTE #’s for nothing.

Your continued quibbling that an impractical choice is still a choice is intentionally naïve, and I don’t say that lightly in your case. It’s like me saying that you have the choice to drive a gold Ferrari to work next week. A hopeless choice, or totally unrealistic choice, is not a choice, and for almost all parents the “choice” you attribute to them is non-existent, for the reasons explained.

“You say that I ‘find time to ignore questions’ (3.10:39pm, 12/3). It is not necessary to ‘find’ time to ignore questions. Ignoring them takes no time at all”
Would that I could believe the above, but it seems like it takes you an incredibly long time to say nothing at all, as your last 50 posts make clear. Somehow I’m well able to answer them using far less words though.

Riddler,

You say, ‘When picking a different month in 1975 instead of the year as a whole yields a $7000 difference on a figure that small, you are cherry picking. It’s obviously dishonest for you to say a whole year has been left out, because you’re using a singular month from 2011 (January). There is no yearly inflation out for 2011, which is why I’ve rather sensibly used the whole calculation for 2010, rather than 1/12th of a calculation from 2011.’ (3.10:39pm, 12/3)

The difference is actually $6,457.83, not $7,000 and not normally rounded up to $7,000.

You have not used the ‘whole calculation for 2010’. You have used a calculation that uses half the CPI increase for 2010 and half the CPI increase for 1975, which is why you end up with a result for 35 years, not the 36 years that actually exist.

Nor have I used ‘1/12th of a calculation from 2011’. I have used nothing from 2011. I just include all of 1975 and all of 2010.

No cherry-picking! No dishonesty! Just a rational decision to keep the whole series consistent by using January figures for every year for teacher salaries, the preceding December figures for the CPI (because there are no January figures and the CPI increase from January 1 of one year to January 1 of the following is almost certainly almost exactly the same as the CPI increase from December 31 of the previous year to December 31 of the year immediately before January 1 of the following year).

Of course, there is no CPI increase for 2011 included. There does not have to be. The CPI increase is calculated until December, 2010 (as near as you can get to January 1, 2011). The calculations are on the CPI increase from January 1, 1975 to January 1, 2011; i.e., exactly 36 years. The calculations go from December 31, 1974 to December 31, 2010 because the CPI is calculated quarterly for March, June, September and December in each year, not for January – and evening the high inflation times of 1975, I do not think the CPI would have increased by even one tenth of one per cent on a single day.

According to normal maths, 2011-1975 = 36.

According to you, 2011-1975 = 35, which result you achieve by putting in 2010 instead of 2011. You get the following result from the annual calculator (http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/):

‘A basket of goods and services valued at $11400 in year 1975, would in year 2010 cost $68,678.53

‘Total change in cost is 502.4 per cent, over 35 years, at an average annual inflation rate of 5.3 per cent’

I use the quarterly calculator so that I cover the whole period. I get:

‘A basket of goods and services valued at $11400 in Dec’1974, would in Dec 2010 cost $75,136.36

‘Total change in cost is 559.1 per cent, over 36 years 0 quarters, at an average annual inflation rate of 5.4 per cent’

Your method says ‘35 years’. The correct method says ‘36 years’. So, it is not dishonest of me to say that a ‘whole year has been left out’. It’s not just me saying it. It’s the RBA calculator.

The calculator gives the CPI increase during 1975 as 14.1 per cent and the CPI increase during 2010 as 2.7 per cent. The way you do it leaves out half of the 1975’s inflation (7.05 per cent) and half 2010’s inflation (1.35 per cent), c 8.5 per cent in total when compounded. 8.5 per cent of $75,136.36 is $6386.59, almost the same as the $6,457.83 difference between the correct figure of $75,136,36 and your incorrect figure of $68,678.45.

Thus, even though the annual compound inflation rate under your method (c5.3 per cent) is only 0.1 per cent less than under the correct method (c5.4 per cent), that annual 0.1 per cent makes a big difference after 36 years.

I can make mathematical errors, but you are the one leaving out a whole year to produce the lower figure.