Of course, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect anybody to pay for the funeral of such socially undesirable misfits, so we saved money by giving them pauper's cremations unless someone was silly enough to pay for something more elaborate.

Sixth, we took 9% from everybody's pay packet and created an industry to invest it, which it did - in derivatives and fiscal trading and in buying shares in the businesses which imported and sold stuff to women and the banks whose credit cards those women used to buy the stuff. Of course it would have been foolish to invest in manufacturing industries, since they were obviously a failed experiment in Australia as any economist could tell. After all, as our Accounts Payab...Treasurer told us yesterday "Services are the future of our economy. not manufacturing, not mining, not construction. Services are 80% of the Australian economy." he proudly intoned from his position as a member of the workers' party.

Seventh, when it became obvious that women professionals were wasting altogether too much money giving it to the government in tax, reducing their ability to buy stuff, we thoughtfully reduced taxes.
Eighth, when women (the sex that’s half as productive as the other one) found that having children was an intolerable burden on their ability to buy stuff, we generously compensated them and when that wasn’t enough, we made employers do it.

Having thought about, you're obviously right. We just couldn't afford to be competitive...

Antiseptic

If abuse of statistics were a crime, you’d be in jail!

For anyone interested, here is a copy of the report he is misrepresenting:

http://www.asxgroup.com.au/media/PDFs/gsjbw_economic_case_for_increasing_female_participation.pdf

You might guess from the report’s title, "The economic case for increasing female participation”, that it does not exactly support Antiseptic’s analysis.

Rhian, the statistics are clear. Goldman Sachs had to satisfy the purchaser, which was EOWA, so they said they "refused to believe We refuse to believe that a female with the same educational and
work experience as a male will be 50% less productive in a similar
role."

And of course they were right. The problem is that women don't choose similar roles and when they do they only work full time until they decide to have children (if they're lucky they find one of the few men left with a job to be the father, so they get more than $10 a week in child support), then they take several years off and when they get bored with having coffee with the girls, or the father of their child gives up and becomes unemployed, they go back to work part-time.

So I'm afraid the abuser of statistics is you, dear.

Antiseptic

The report clearly shows, not just assumes, that women’s lower productivity is due mainly to the industries and occupations they work in.

Even if one accepts your insulting little stereotype, it will have little direct effect on the data. If women are takings several years off to “have coffee with the girls”, they are not in the labour force, so they are irrelevant to productivity. Career breaks can affect a person’s accumulation of experience, and this may lower lifetime earnings somewhat, but not enough to explain the data. Working part time has no direct effect on measured productivity, which conventionally in Australia is measured as output per hour worked, not per employee, though again it may be that the types of jobs that are suitable for part-timers have relatively low productivity.

All of the data and analysis in the report you quote supports conclusions that are completely the opposite of what you are trying to argue. To selectively quote and misrepresent the report to try to bolster your argument without acknowledging this is deliberate misrepresentation.

It really is you that abuses statistics, dear.

Antiseptic thank you. I have not had such a great laugh in years.

Not at you, but with you, as I can see you are laughing at us, & indeed yourself, for being so damn foolish as to have let it happen.

I had never put it together so well, & probably couldn't anyway, but it is a great description of half the community committing a very slow suicide, by sitting back & watching it all happen.

One point you missed was the male giving control of education to the feminists, & allowing them to disenfranchise the males.

I do hope you have a flack jacket, I'm sure you'll need it.

All very entertaining, Antiseptic. But irrelevant.

>>For example, you say that "we cannot support the level of investment required by our industries (i.e "economic growth") from domestic sources.", which is trivially true, but ignores the fact that the national priority since 1974 has been to subsidise women into work and education.<<

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, of course, so there's no surprise that you took the opportunity to segue into your hobby-horse topic. But you failed to point out any linkage between the fascinating factoids that you present, and the accumulation of overseas debt.

Or did I overlook something?

>>First, money that was marked for such use was not available to invest in those industries that you mention above.<<

Was this public money, from our taxes? Or was it private money, paid by the companies who borrow from overseas? If the latter, it would help to explain how much was involved, and how it was spent.

>>...we could have an economy which is 22% or thereabouts bigger if we had chosen a more sensible set of PMs<<

Oh dear. If you actually think about this, you would need to increase the number of men in the workforce to achieve this outcome. Any thoughts on where you might find them?

>>... imports rose rapidly, because our own manufacturing sector, with no investment funds to modernise and deliberately deprived of tariff protections, were left to die.<<

Ya think, DiNozzo?

Tariff protection, or any other form of artificial government support, does not guarantee the survival of a business in the long term - think, car industry. All it achieves is to make those products it "protects" more expensive to the consumer, forcing up the cost of living and depriving people of the ability to save. The very savings that are required to obviate the need to borrow overseas.

Incidentally, re-reading your litany of complaints, I suspect there might be more than a smidgeon of personal experience in your rant against women. If so, you have my sympathy.

But that still doesn't validate your argument that it impacts overseas debt.