Professor – no, really, Professor – Richard Murphy decides to go investigating.
I was playing with some data this morning as a result of some work I am doing on wealth taxes. I looked at data on mean and median wages as a result. This is the latest data from the ONS, to March 2022, all stated in 2022 prices.
Shrug.
To do so he presents us with mean and median household income.
Lord Help Us All.
For those who don’t get this, households have varying numbers of wage earners in them. Household incomes include non-wage income – from capital of course, but also benefits.
Pendant.
To the tune of Champagne Charlie:
For Murph, Murph, Murphy is his name; Murph, Murph, Murphing is his game
He tortures data at night, night, night, giving data such a good old fright
Murph, Murph, Murphing is his game; Murph, Murph, Murphing all the same
He’s the prince of useless arseholes and Murph, Murph, Murphy is his name.
Here’s the tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7F_7YpJ1EA
For those who don’t get this, households have varying numbers of wage earners in them. Household incomes include non-wage income – from capital of course, but also benefits.
If that isn’t a revelation, I don’t know what would qualify as one.
The increasing number of pensioner and student households (in absolute terms, but more importantly as a percentage of the total and relative to wage-earner households) will significantly alter the relationship between median wages and median household income. This will do so to a greater extent than the change in the number of working-age households living on benefits.
I should be willing to bet that Murphy will use this to pretend that “inequality is increasing” wah! wah! wah!
“I was playing with some data this morning”
And I’m sure by the time he has finished playing with it, the results will tell him exactly what he wants them to tell him.
OK, there will be a few wild assumptions and a couple of non sequitur conclusions but Spud always writes his conclusions first before hammering the facts into unrecognisable shapes to fit them.
“I was
playing withmanipulating some data this morning”.Andrew C @ 10.11, your second sentence perfectly describes the majority of studies carried out in any field these days. Or, possibly, ever.