Economic Rigor

Started reading Steven Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature", which is a bit of a monster. Claims that violence of all kinds has actually been decreasing. This includes all violence including sexual assault and rape. Now, this is an interesting premise, as from how the feminists speak, you would think that there is an epidemic of sexual violence currently underway in the western world. And even some crime statistics seem to indicate sexual crimes are actually increasing. So I figured, I would go to the stats and see what is happening in Australia. So the earliest ABS record I can find about experiences of sexual violence would be "Women's safety survey 1996". The other relevant release is the "Personal safety survey, 2016" which has replaced it. So they are our two bookends to determine if sexual violence has increased. First, in 1996, from the women's safety survey, the amount of women who have experienced sexual violence...

Been doing some modelling on the negative gearing changes proposed by Labor. This has caused some controversy in property investment circles due to the impact. It's funny though. On this very blog, I proposed the same policy, way back in March 2015. wonder if Chris Bowan (shadow Treasurer) is trolling my site. http://economicrigor.blogspot.com/2015/03/new-policy-option-for-government.html Anyway, lots of talk about the impact...doom and gloom etc, so I figured I would do some analysis to see what the effect was. Anyway, lets start with some assumptions. 1. House price of $1,000,000 2. Interest only loan of $800,000 at 4% 3. Rents of $600 a week 4. Occupancy of 80% 4. Rental Expences of $5000 a year 5. Other Income of Investor = $80,000 6. Effective Tax rate of investor = 27% 7. No capital appreciation for property OK. So @600 a week@80% occupancy for 52 weeks, it means that Income from housing = $24960   Interest paid = 0.04*800,000 = $32,000 a year As Inter...