[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[Arwon]

Lots of things.

1. Negative gearing is a huge culprit, we have incredibly favourable tax policies for people investing in real estate and neither major party is willing to touch something so dear to the bloody baby boomer generation.

Negative gearing is where the income from rent from the property is less than the costs of the investment, which includes the interest of the investment loan and other expenses.

Loss-making investors are hoping to be able to eventually sell the property for a price that more than makes up for the losses incurred along the way.

Australia is one of the few countries among those with similar tax systems to allow negative-gearing losses on all income-producing assets, not just property, to be offset against investors' other income.

It is seen as particularly generous to investors, given the capital gains on which capital gains tax applies is discounted by 50 per cent as long as the investment is held for at least a year

Basically as I understand it, you can negatively gear a property ad infinitum, and use the losses in rental income versus mortgate size to offset other tax liabilities.

2. There's also a first home owner grant where first-time buyers get given up to $15,000 to help buy the first home they purchase. Helps bait people into joining the overinflated market.

3. Some of it's due simply to economic growth - we haven't had a recession since 1991 and have gotten a lot richer in that time. That's gonna have a flow-on in real house price terms even without 1 and 2 channeling people's investment money into real estate.

4. Lack of density due to maybe some cultural factors. Australians are weirdos and a lot of us hate apartments and dense living because we're stupid and think kids need back yards to play cricket in rather than parks with other kids. This means more push for larger blocks of land and larger houses which pushes prices up. Density is increasing even as they sprawl outwards, but Australian cities are all still pretty sprawly. Sydney is our densest populated city and Greater Sydney is roughly as dense as LA, just 40% that of London. Canberra is as low density as friggin Phoenix.

There's some pretty great charts/maps of our major cities population distributions here

5. Supply issues, again related to density. There's not enough dense housing in the inner cities and probably not enough housing stock for weirdos who like the suburbs either.

Part of this is political economy. Planning and development is mostly a state government domain but due to the vertical fiscal imbalance (due to different high court constitional law decisions, states can't raise income tax but are mostly responsible for healthcare and education) those State governments are heavily dependent on transaction tax (stamp duty) revenue. So they're not terribly interested in reducing the cost of housing as it impacts their own income - they've skin in the house price game.

Planning and development is also a mess of conflicting local and state government agencies anyway. There's little coordination in policies for managing urban growth, for example in public transport to support more dense development. A lot of the choicest inner city areas are pretty NIMBYish with small local councils and long-term residents. Etc etc. In most cities except Sydney it's more expensive to build and buy inner city apartments than a big house on the fringes.

6. Then there's just some geographical constraints that operate in tandem with low densities and a rich population that's gone 23 years without recession... for example most of the urban fringes and potential infill places are owned in small blocks by existing semi-rural or hobby-farm residents, making it hard to do big new developments. Sydney as I understand it has basically hit the limits of available land to expand into, having reached mountains, ocean, and national parks in pretty much every direction. Making infill the only possibility.

7. Politically, the people impacted by lack of affordability aren't important voters. With single member electoral districts renters are a minority in most places, and outer-suburban electoral districts have generally been the marginal seats, ones which have swung elections. Any attempt to change most of the policies that are feeding the situation are going to be electoral poison with the middle class, baby boomer, mortgage-holding homeowner demographic which swings election.

The federal government, for instance, is so disinterested they scrapped the body tasked with merely monitoring housing supply.

So basically I'd be looking mostly to negative gearing and economic prosperiy as a culprit for the inflation while noting density is also a factor keeping underlying pries high.

 

[Arwon]

To use the Australian Capital Territory as an example, we're actually a 2.5 party system and all three parties are split on the density/prices issue. We don't have single member districts but the city's pretty homogenous all over so the result is the same.

On the question of housing affordability the conservative Liberal Party are basically split between hatred of regulations and developer influence, which both things to make them support higher density, but they've a voter base of rich boomers who like high prices, and they have a conservative cultural attachment to the suburban ideal. They're also not keen on the state investment in public transport which would be required to really change how we live.

Labor of course have a natural interest in supporting lower income people and being concerned about affordability. They should love the idea of big infrastructure projects to support increasing density (we're getting a light rail line for this reason). BUT they also have a similar interest in that boomer/owner suburban voter base. They're also usually in government due to a centre-left leaning population, and so they have a desperate need for land rates and stamp duty income which come more with high prices. Their interest in social equity, affordability, the situation of non-owners, etc, hasn't overridden electoral and budgetary self interest.

The Greens also have a split, again heavily generational. With boomers (read: former hippies turned public servants) liking their expensive investment properties while students and young people strain under high rents, locked out of the market. There's the same progressive/left fairness and affordability concerns as in Labor. There's also differeing views of environmentalism with plenty of people (read: former hippies turned public servants) who see density as "urban blight" which is bad for nature and health and whathaveyou. Much better to have lots of greenery about, we're the Bush Capital after all. Blarg.

What I'm saying is kill all boomers.

 

[Borachio]

A sentiment which I do my best not to take personally.

But it's a bit of a strain in the face of someone who wishes me dead.

 

[Arwon]

#notALLboomers

 

[Domen]

Zombie Apocalypse death causes:

Data taken from: http://www.tv.com/shows/the-walking...-kill-count-for-all-characters-97118-3385383/

 

[Domen]

My dad was born in Bialystok, Podlaskie voivodeship, and most of his side of the family still lives there.

Some of his family members live just across the border in Belarus. When the borders shifted in WW2, those were the people who refused to move. They wanted to continue living in their homes, whether they were in a new country or not.

As a result none of them speak Polish anymore, and they are pretty much Belarusian now. He's visited them once or twice in the last couple decades, and he has to use Russian to communicate with them. They are very poor. From what I remember they don't even consider themselves to be Polish culturally, but I could have some of that wrong. My dad seemed pretty down about the whole situation, so I didn't ask him too much about it.

Thanks Warpus!

According to official Belarusian census data, majority of Poles in Belarus speak Russian or Belarusian today, but they still identify as Poles in censuses.

Also in most of regions of Belarus, being a Catholic = being a Pole. Though there are also some regions where Catholics identify as Belarusians, as well as some regions where large groups of Orthodox people identify as Poles (in the past Polish identity among Orthodox and Jewish people in Western Belarus was even much more frequent). For example here is how it looks like in the Grodno Oblast (according to official Belarusian censuses):

Note the weird fluctuations of the percent of people who identify as Poles - for example in Ashmyany Raion in 1959 over 25%, down to 8% in 1970, then up again to 21% in 1989, then down again to 12% in 1999 - in my opinion this testifies to lack of reliability / falsification of censuses, but I don't entirely dismiss the possibility that people there are so frequently changing their mind on whether they are Poles or Belarusians or someone else:

=============================================

Despite post-WW2 deportations and emigration, ethnic Poles are still majority in large areas of the Belarusian-Lithuanian-Latvian borderland:

Even today (years 1999-2001) in the historical Wilno Region ethnic Poles are still over 1/4 of population, despite the fact that at least 50% of all Poles who had lived there before WW2 from this area were deported or emigrated to Poland in years 1944 - 1958 (and many more have emigrated later):

Tables and map from: Mariusz Kowalski, "Wileńszczyzna jako problem geopolityczny w XX wieku", Warszawa 2008.

 

[Mise]

A few charts that demonstrate my work ethic. Microsoft Outlook has a “journal” feature that logs every time you open a spreadsheet, word document, powerpoint, etc, and how long you had it open for. I exported this to a CSV file and did some graphs in Excel. Note that the data is highly unreliable and not rigorous at all. For example, sometimes I don’t bother logging off – I just put my machine on sleep. In this case, I won’t close any spreadsheet, and the log will continue to record that I’ve had it open all night long. So to get rid of these, I’ve just taken the absolute time of day, rather than looking at the duration. This unfortunately gets rid of a lot of data at the end of the day, but does mean that I get slightly more data at the start of the day. Essentially, the data logs when I have opened and closed a spreadsheet, and thus should be thought of in that context.

What I wanted to do was to work out if I was spending more or less time at work than earlier in my career. The log goes back to some time in 2009. Though the data is unreliable, the trends are fairly clear.

The first graph shows the earliest time I opened a spreadsheet during that month, and the latest time I closed it during that month. This gives an idea of the extent of my work day, particularly in months that are surprising or unusual:

I used to work late at least once during several months at the start of 2009. However, by June, I had stopped opening or closing any spreadsheets after 5pm entirely. There were a few months in which I was required to open or close a spreadsheet late at least once; however, they are few and far between, and in general the last time I opened or closed a spreadsheet was between 4:30pm and 5:00pm.

Opening/closing spreadsheets in the morning was more consistent. I rarely came in particularly early (again, I had one month where I had to start early at least once in 2009), generally opening/closing spreadsheets no earlier than 8:30. However, there is one time of the year in particular that stands out: Feb 2011 and Mar 2012. These are when the bonus/salary reviews were held, and apparently I was coming in early to make an impression.

The other big change was between September and October 2013. This is when my boss called me in to tell me that I needed to start coming in to work on time. Evidently, the previous few months when I was coming in at 9:30 did not go unnoticed, neither by my boss nor by Outlook’s journaling feature.

The second chart is a histogram of opening/closing times (rounded to the nearest 15 minutes), showing approximately the distribution of earliest openings and closings of spreadsheets:

Note that some of the ones after 9:30am were either an artefact of the “putting my computer to sleep” thing I mentioned earlier (meaning that I didn’t need to open a spreadsheet when I got in as they were already open), or because I had early meetings on those days. The most obvious thing to note is that, irrespective of what time I arrive, I leave at 4:30 or thereabouts. To wit, on 76% of my days did my last spreadsheet opening/closing activity occur between 4:25 and 4:45. This sort of contradicts the first graph, but if anything, it shows that the first graph is kind of useless, and the distribution is much more instructive.

Finally, how the distribution of start and finish times have changed over time:

The vertical red/blue lines represent my “official” start and finish times, 8:45 and 4:45. Again, the finish times barely change over time, while the start time tends to increase between 2009 and 2013, while going back significantly in 2014 after the “chat” with my boss.

Anyway this is how I spent the past couple hours at work.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Just because a spreadsheet is open doesn't mean work was done on it.

 

[Mise]

No of course not. It does mean that I was in the office at the time recorded though, which is what I wanted to know.

Unfortunately I don't have admin rights so can't open the Event Viewer in Windows to see actual logon/logoff times.

 

[dutchfire]

If your boss finds out about this feature, your coworkers are going to be angry at you.

 

[luiz]

Evolution of the overall tax burden in Brazil, 1999-2012

In 2014 it's approaching 40%, the highest among any so-called emerging markets. But hey, at least we get crappy roads, crappy hospitals, crappy schools, and one murder every 10 minutes (yeah you read that right). And people wonder why some unpatriotic traitors don't like paying their taxes...

 

[CavLancer]

Certainly you must get many mansions and yachts for the elite, lets not cry poverty when there are so many rich politicians about.

 

[Imrahil91]

Each node represents a scientific journal and the edges are somehow calculated by other papers cited in them. Thus making a map of connections between fields of science.

Larger version
Source with article

 

[Mise]

So I decided to take those graphs to the next level and wrote the following AutoHotkey script to write to a log file every time I change windows, so that I can record exactly how much work I'm doing and when:

#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
#Persistent

SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

SetBatchLines, -1
Process, Priority,, High

Gui +LastFound
hWnd := WinExist()

DllCall( "RegisterShellHookWindow", UInt,hWnd )
MsgNum := DllCall( "RegisterWindowMessage", Str,"SHELLHOOK" )
OnMessage( MsgNum, "ShellMessage" )
Return

ShellMessage( wParam,lParam )
{
    WinGetTitle, Title, ahk_id %lParam%
    if Title <> 
    {
        FormatTime, curDate,, dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss
        FileAppend, %curDate%`,%Title%`n, C:\Databases\log.txt
    }
}

I still need to improve it by e.g. adding something that will tell me when I'm AFK (i.e. when the screensaver goes on or when I lock my computer), and also when I put it to sleep/wake up/turn on/off etc. But for the bulk of the day it will be pretty useful.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Bulldogs are terrible, I agree.

Spoiler :

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Is that a cat ?

Also, border collies are awsome.

 

[KMRblue1027]

Is that a cat ?

Also, border collies are awsome.

I'm almost certain there's a cat in the upper right.

 

[ArneHD]

That chart appears to be quite biased against large dogs, probably due to how it's weighted.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Large dogs are quite harder to handle and take care of, it's that simple.

 

[madviking]

large madvikings are also harder to handle and take care of