Antiseptic,

This is for you:

http://www.menslineaus.org.au/Upload/136.pdf

What did govt; policy have to do with the requirement for both partners having to work, to pay a mortgage. The requirement was self inflicted, by the, must have mcmansion, and 4 w drive. And now it is out of control. 7 or 800,000 for a house in a city. How can anyone live with that hanging over your head. The boomers are on easy street, look at the mess the younger gen; have got themselves into now. The whole balance of life has been put at risk because of greed.

"How do they measure the productivity that you lot achieve as the result of my insights?"

Houllie you really are an OLO gem. Onion's working at work to achieve 100% productivity was eerily all too familiar :).

Any bureaucrat worth their salt can spirit up a measure for any occasion. If you ever read annual reports thoroughly you will find in each subsequent year there are often 'Amendments' to the previous year's annual reports mostly in relation to figures. The same figures used to justify a program or section's existence. One database I worked with many years ago would come up with a different result for the same period when applying different search parameters (ie. monthly, weekly, daily or yearly) over the same period. The results differed every single time - probably a programming issue. A search over the year might come up with 25,000 but using a monthly search x 12 (with correct time parameters) would always differ sometimes by thousands. These were the figures used in the reports.

Smoke and mirrors.

Human factors and other more subtle contributions to society are not easily measured but are sorely missed if they are diminished.

GDP is meaningless when used alone. Knowing women are 'measured' as only 50% productive compared to men does not cause me to lose sleep at night. Women and any 'unproductive' men are probably busy doing other important 'unmeasurable' work.

Hollie

"How productive is a Hug from a mum"

These things seem to be measured in dollars. How much would you pay your mum for a hug? If she suddenly died, would you pay more than that for one last hug from mum? If so, the economy requires you to shoot your mum. All of us must do whatever we can to increase productivity.

After you have done your bit for productivity, get back to work. Australia's seems to be experiencing a desperate widget shortage. My local Bunnings doesn't seem to have a single widget in stock.

579, I'm not so sure it's greed, rather, it's lack of wanting o commit an go without that stop many youg ones from owning a home.

Take a look at any of the many eat streets on a Friday or Saturday night, they are usually crowded with young ones spending what could be their mortgage money.

It's all about choices. It easier to buy a house today than it was thirty years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday

I can't reproduce it, unfortunately, but I recommend everybody have a look at this.