Education Efficiency....what is happening in VIC!

Been looking into Education funding, particularly in the Primary and Secondary Space.
Interesting to note that while education funding has increased over 14 years between 1999 and 2013, the number of schools operating has dropped.

I note that over the 14 years there has been a decrease of 194 schools...schools that have closed. But it's worse in the Government sector. Over the 14 years, 306 Government schools have closed...it's just that Catholic schools (16) and Independent Schools (96) have opened to counter the decrease. I guess that is why the rate of students in private schooling has increased over the years.

The biggest drops in schools have been in VIC (105 Government schools closed), SA (101 Government schools closed) and QLD (64 Government schools closed). The only difference is that in QLD, an equivalent amount of Catholic and Independent schools have opened, leaving only a net loss of 1 school. The other two states are still in the deficit of schools by around 100.

Number of schools has only increased in two states, NT and WA...probably due to the mining boom over the years.

What is also interesting is that even with these school closure in VIC, and QLD...the number of Government teaching staff is still increasing...for VIC, at 1.1% a year and for QLD, at 1.6% a year. SA bucks the trend, experiencing a loss of teachers of 0.2% a year.

So we have a situation where in VIC, in 1999 it was 23 teachers per government school....now in 2013, it is 29 teachers per school.

Not great efficiency really. Think the teachers union have a lot of power in VIC!

Asian Cup 2015 - Australia no luck....still in the pool of death!

Still no luck with the Soccer gods for Australia.

Looking at our underwealming performance in the World Cup, I have started to think about our next big event...hosting the Asian Cup.

Bit of Silverwear for the Socceroos? Not likely based on the draw.

Once again, we have ended up in the pool of death, along with South Korea, Oman and Kuwait.

Based on my formaula for pool of death, created during the World Cup, we are no certainties to go through...it's the strongest group. Home field advantage will hopefully help propel us across the line...but no guarantees.

The danger is when you look at our record against the teams over the last 5 years.

South Korea Record over the last 5 years. Played 4 times, Wins equal 1-1 (2 draw)
Oman Record over the last 5 years. Played 6 times, Australia 3-1 (2 draws)
Kuwait Record over the last 5 years. Played 2 times, Kuwait 1-0 (1 draw)

We have played Oman the most, with the most victories, but who knows about the other two. Might be worth throwing some dollars on Australia missing the Second Round...

World Cup 2104 - Group of Death? It's actually Group D, but Group B and G are tough as well

Yeah, World cup starts today, so running the ruler over the groups to see which is the most likely to cause some upsets.

Generally, the way you calculate the "Group of Death" is to calculate the variance of the 4 teams in the pool based on their rankings and the group with the lowest variance would be the "Death" group. By this rational, it would be, in order of deadliest to easiest.

Group D (Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy)
Group E (Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras)
Group G (Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA)
Group C (Columbia, Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan)
Group F (Argentina, Bosnia and H, Iran, Nigeria)
Group H (Belgium, Nigeria, Russia, South Korea)
Group A (Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, Croatia)
Group B (Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia)

You can see the problem here. The traditional method says that Group B, the team containing 3 teams ranked in the top 15 is the easiest. This is due to the presence of my team (sigh), Australia which is ranked 62nd in the world, thus putting up the variance.

So a better method of calculating the Group of death is to find the variance of the top three teams and the variance of the 2nd and 3rd ranked team (as they are all fighting for 2 spots). Applying an equal weighting to each to get a total variance, we get the following order, from deadliest to easiest

Group D (Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy)
Group B (Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia)
Group G (Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA)
Group A (Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, Croatia)
Group C (Columbia, Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan)
Group E (Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras)
Group F (Argentine, Bosnia and H, Iran, Nigeria)
Group H (Belgium, Nigeria, Russia, South Korea)

Another Reason why minimum wage increases don't matter to job growth - Average wages are growing faster!

Further to the previous post

I calculated the minimum wage growing at around 3.5% a year from 1997-2012. Not bad.

But when you look at the Salaries and wages out of the ATO tax statistics, you have the average wages per tax payer growing at 4.5% a year over the same period.

So clearly, it's not minimum wags responsible for job growth. Which sort of makes sense. Generally, business do not want to hire minimum wage workers, especially in an advanced economy. Minimum wage workers are people with low bargaining power; i.e the elderly, young, uneducated, disabled or immigrants performing "grunt" jobs, jobs that don't require a lot of thinking or automomy...clearly jobs that a lot of people don't want. Also, this type of job is on the decline as automation and IT self service systems replace the jobs so there are not enough of them (last count I have seen is less than 10% of the workforce) to really influence job growth statistics.

Generally, you want people who can add value to your business, and these people come with a premium; one that business is usually happy to pay as they add more value than that premium to the business.

Does an increase in the minimum wage affect Jobs growth...Yes, but it's not statistically significant

A lot of press at the moment about the decision to increase the minimum wage by 3% or so. Business claiming it will cause some grief in regards to employment.

So I grabbed some info from the ABS around growth in "Employed Australians" and GDP (seasonally adjusted), grabbed the updates to the minimum wage from Fair Work and did a basic regression.

Couple of assumptions
1. Assumed that the June 30 was the end of the year.
2. Growth in GDP was for the year (July - June)
3. Growth in Employed Australian's was for the Year (July- June)
4. Tried a couple of regressions, with a few lags.
5. MinWage increase takes affect on July 1st

Best model was Jobs Growth = 0.34*GDP + 0.32*GDP (year before) - 0.1*MinWage Growth(year before)

Adjusted R2 = 0.28, ANOVA F Stat p value = 0.08.

GDP and GDP (year before) statitsically significant at the 89% level (not 95% level) and Minwage growth (year before) only significant at the 78% level

So really, you would have to say that Job growth it is more about GDP than minimum wages. Which is true.

Relationship between GDP and temperature in Australia: Distant cousins, twice removed

RBA Meeting for June : Decline mentioned 4 times

Top 5 nouns from this month vs last month This month

growth
remain
low
rates
interest
prices

Last Month

growth
rate
year
conditions
rates
remain
But the big Verb is the kicker This Month = Decline (mentioned 4 times, up from 2 times in May) Last Month = Demand (mentioned 4 times)   So doesn't look good for a rise any time soon, at least not until inflation rises (they seem to be watching prices a bit)  

Greatest uses of Superannuation and Negative Gearing Tax breaks in Australia - Old Middle Class Men!

Been looking through the taxation statistics provided by the ATO for 2011/2012. With all the talk around the budget being too unfair, and that Superannuation and negative gearing tax concessions should be getting reduced instead, I decided to check who was actually using them.

For negative gearing, I looked at the amount of tax payers recording a Net rent loss, and the total amount of losses.

It turns out there 1.2 million tax payers recording around  $13.8 billion in losses (around $10,000 loss each). The biggest concession

Biggest users of this in order...Men Earning between $100,000 - $150,000 in taxable income from 30 - 59 years of age (the manager class really). Also men between 50-54 who are earning between $60,000 - $80,000. Also a couple of Female groups in the non-taxable class (I'm assuming spouses) who are aged between 35-44 and earning less than $6000

For Superannuation - the Salary Sacrifice tax dodge, we have it as the silver medal concession with 1.2 million using it for 12.6 billion in amount salary sacrifices. Men Earning between $100,000 - $150,000 in taxable income from 35 -64 years of age. Also men earning between $70,000 - $80,000 aged between 50-69 and men aged 55-59 earning $60,000-$70,000. No chick groups in the top 10.

For Superannuation - Personal Contributions, the male rules again in 186,000 users of it for $4.4 billion
.Males Earning between $30,000-$37,000 in taxable income from 50-70 years of age; also males aged 50-60 earning between $100,000-$150,000, and females between 60-64 earning $30,000-$37,000

Interesting stuff. Its basically middle class men on the way to the retirement village getting these concessions. Something to think about.