Super Statistic needs Understanding

Your problems? Solved. email nick leth at gmail dot com. No worries. Now.

70% : Proportion of Australians with retirement savings in default super funds (There's cause for optimism, The West, 31 Dec 2011)

Salaried employees are forced to put money into super funds. So what does a bricklayer know about investment? What does an engineer know about finance? What does an administrative clerk know about equity markets, the Chinese economy, international equities? Not to mention all those mysterious defensive stocks, derivatives and dead cat bounces...

How are typical employees expected to make informed decisions on the long-term investment options for their retirement savings?!

That's why we select financial "experts" to give us advice.

Unfortunately, as Nick Bruining reports, the financial experts know no more that anyone else.

"Most leading analysts [are] saying shares are undervalued..." Why? Presumably because all the experts are paying too little for them... because the buying (or non-buying) experts believe that the shares are not worth much. So who are these analysts who believe that shares are undervalued?

If you can sell a share for $10 then it is worth $10. That is its value.

These "leading analysts" are guessing the future, guessing that these $10 shares will -- at some indeterminate time in the future -- be worth $11. So they are, the experts claim, "undervalued".

So why are the shares selling at only $10? Because -- according to the actual market value -- they are worth just $10. Shares are valued, not undervalued.

Still, one analyst predicts that a key index will stay below this year's high. Which means, I guess, that at least one analyst believes that shares are currently overvalued. Which is, of course, just as false.

"There's cause for optimism", according to the headline. "The general mood (for 2012) is not a positive one," according to another expert, quoted at the end of the article.

So in one report we have gone from optimism to pessimism.

And this is just a review of the guesses of financial investment "experts".

How is the non-expert expected to know the financial future? We don't -- so we employ experts.

We are forced to pay money into super funds. We hope that the super funds will know what they are doing. That they will know more about investment -- their stated field of expertise -- than we do. That expertise is why we pay them some of our money.

Well, we're forced to pay someone. It may as well be a self-professed and hopefully qualified expert.

So why buy a dog and bark yourself?!

The government forces us to give money to large investment companies. We are provided with huge amounts of data... ranges of mysterious choices... wild and contradictory guesses provided by numerous "experts"... but no training.

The government wants us to take the blame for "our" forced investment plans.

Is anyone surprised that 70% of Australians take the default option?

Rather than being surprised, perhaps the government could act to protect our superannuation savings. We are forced to save. We have no investment expertise.

The government forces us to save. Super funds do their best -- we hope -- but we can't really know. 70% of super fund members do not know enough to attempt to better the "experts".

Time for the government to stop washing its hands of super fund responsibility.

We are forced to give money to super funds. We do not have the knowledge to try to outperform "experts" who manage investments for a living.

The government has a role -- a responsibility -- to govern the super funds. To protect the forced investments of the 70% of Australians who push money into a black hole of investment. And who hope to get something back when they really need it.

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com

Magistrate bores on

Your problems? Solved. email nick leth at gmail dot com. No worries. Now.

Okay, so some drongos drove down the highway with what looked like dangerous weapons. Scared a few other drivers. Should have known better.

Silly, eh.

According to the newspaper report, they "avoided serious punishment" ('Stupid' prank ends in court, The West, 31 Dec 2011). It's a bit sad that waving plastic guns around could even be considered as meriting serious punishment. Still, that's the way we are.

So anyway... These things that looked like dangerous weapons were Nerf guns. Plastic toys that fire foam darts. Toys for young children.

Painted black.

To look dangerous...

To look real.

Okay, they now look like dangerous weapons. Silly young men for waving them round in public. Something that earns them a "tsk, tsk," rather than punishment.

But that's not what caught my attention.

What caught my attention was the final paragraph of reporter Kate Campbell's story:

Magistrate Robert Young questioned the men's maturity by saying the toy guns were more appropriate for the under-10 market.

What sort of boring old ... person... do we have as magistrate?!

At what age did Young lose the urge to have fun? To play with toys?

Does he sit at his big desk all day and glower... just for practice?

Is this magistrate so absolutely boring that he cannot imagine the fun of just playing around?!

What does he do for entertainment? Collect photos of power poles?

I hope that I never become that boring.

Perhaps that's why I'm not a magistrate.

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com

Children and the bus bureacrats

Your problems? Solved. email nick leth at gmail dot com. No worries. Now.

A couple of kids were left on a school bus.

They forgot to get off at their kindergarten. The bus driver did not check that all children had left the bus. The kids were left in the bus all day, until the driver returned for his afternoon school run.

Bethany Hiatt, education editor for The West Australian, reported on the incident (School bus contracts must be child-proof, 28 Dec 2011). She wrote:

His [a parent's] point was simple: the policies are sound, the penalties in place seem adequate, but drivers do not seem to be aware of them.

I'm sure that the drivers do know of their responsibilities. What is lacking is the occasional reminder of what they need to do.

It doesn't happen often, that children are left, forgotten, on a school bus. Yet even not often is too often. So school bus services manager John Bailly wrote a reminder letter to all bus contractors.

And that is a key problem with the process.

Bailly wrote... well... a lot. I don't know how much he actually wrote. Hiatt's article quotes perhaps 8 column centimetres of Bailly's letter to contractors. Here is one extract, as quoted:

In all cases, these incidents would not have occurred if the driver had got out of his or her seat at the end of the school run and had actually walked up and down the bus aisle and checked all the seats.

Hiatt also reports that Bailly said -- presumably in his letter to bus contractors, that "leaving a young child on a school bus was viewed by the Government as a serious breach of contract, so errant operators would have to show why their school bus contract should not be terminated."

Are you with me so far?

Or have you fallen asleep due to the long-winded and boring extracts from Bailly's letter...

Imagine you are a school bus driver

Put yourself in the place of a school bus driver. Are you a child-molesting, psychotic sadist? Do you enjoy the power of locking small children into stifling hot enclosed spaces? Probably not.

I would imagine that most school bus drivers are reasonable human beings. They have a job to do and they do it. And, like everyone, they need a simple process that works -- and occasional reminders, to follow the process.

Some head office bureaucrat sees a possible problem in the bus driver process. He doesn't contact you, the bus driver. He sends a letter to your employer. Your employer has never driven a bus in his life. Certainly not a school bus.

The bureaucrat's letter is several pages long.

The letter begins with a series of past incidents. Your employer skims, thinks, never happened here...

The letter continues, with a statement that, "The number of incidents to date reflects that there is nearly one incident per year. This is unacceptable."

Yeah, yeah, thinks your employer, the bus run contractor, Of course it's unacceptable... Get to the point...

By the second page -- or perhaps by the third -- the bureaucrat gets, almost, to the point: "... show why their school bus contract should not be terminated."

Terminated?! thinks the contractor. That's serious. And so the contractor mentions the letter to a couple of the drivers. Or pins it up on a board in the office -- which no bus driver ever visits -- with a red circle round, "terminated".

A keen (and rich) contractor may copy the letter and post it to each of the bus drivers.

Which is where you -- the bus driver -- get back into the story...

You skim the letter.

Bureaucratic words, lots of them.

Convoluted sentences.

No clear point.

No idea what you're meant to do about it...

So you forget about it.

After all, you know that you are a careful bus driver.

What should be done?

Send a letter to the school bus contractor. Write simply, Please pass the attached to each of your bus drivers. (See? A simple letter, it's clear what is required, the required action can be done, quickly.)

The attached letter -- to be sent to each bus driver -- says: Remember, after each trip, walk down the bus and make sure that no children have been left behind. This letter is in large print. It can be read -- and understood -- quickly. It can even be pinned up in the bus -- by the driver, where the driver can see it -- as a regular reminder.

Keep the message simple.

No driver wants to leave children locked in their bus.

A simple reminder is needed.

Use just a few words. Few enough that they will be read. And understood.

I would bet that the drivers are happy to follow a simple and worthwhile step in their daily process. They may just need an occasional -- brief -- reminder.

---

Oh, and remember that Bailly's long letter included the threat to the contractor, "... show why their school bus contract should not be terminated"?

Well... the bus driver "was stood down".

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com

New tactic to save the Swan

Your problems? Solved. email nick leth at gmail dot com. No worries. Now.

The front page of today's (28 Dec 2011) West has the headline: New tactic to save the Swan: $100 river levy.

What a sad load of rubbish.

This "tactic" is to raise money. To take money from the general public. To do what? No idea... What sort of tactic is that?!

The newspaper article is based on "a draft strategy prepared by the Swan River Trust". Perhaps the "strategy" has some actual actions which have some relevance to saving the Swan River. Perhaps it is just that the reporters -- Jane Hammond and Yolanda Zaw -- were too lazy to read past the obvious headline item of a $100 levy.

All-in-all, it's a light-weight, meaningless article. An attempt to raise public ire, with a new levy... proposal... as its justification for front page placement. Plus a photo filler -- half a page -- of people having fun on a different river!

There is no worthwhile point to the newspaper story.

There is a very serious point to the strategy which the story pretends to report.

Can the Swan be saved?

I wonder why the Swan River is called the Swan River? Have you seen it lately? You'd be lucky to see a swan, anywhere near the Swan River.

Why have the swans left the Swan River?

Where do swans nest? In reed beds, scrub, swamps beside rivers and lakes. The first actions of Swan River Colony settlers was to fill in the swamps and dredge the river. Now the river is edged with walls, houses and roads.

Where can swans nest? Nowhere near the Swan River...

We have also covered the river with boats. Damaged river banks with the wash from boats. Run boats, ferries, river cruises up and down the river, to make sure that swans will have no peaceful sanctuary for swimming, eating, mating, breeding.

We fish from the river, with occasional complaints that there are less fish due to river pollution. Pollution?

We use the river as a drain and a tip. Muck and filth from industrial areas is washed down drains into the Swan. Fertiliser from farms and lawns and gardens is washed into the river. As we power our boats up and down the river we dump rubbish, broken bottles, plastic wrappers, leftover food... Waste of all kinds now floats and sinks in our river. To be covered by the oil and diesel that is a normal byproduct of powerboats.

What could possibly live in this rubbish tip of a river? By choice? Nothing. By the evidence? Very, very few swans.

The few swans that do live near the river will be hunted and killed. Original settlers would have eaten them. Now, the eating is left to the "domesticated" cats and dogs which are allowed to roam the river edges. There is a "benefit" to allowing building close to water: it's less distance for the cats to travel on their daily killing sprees.

So what are our plans to save our Swan River?

First, we will raise a heap of money. Not as much as is already being spent -- to little apparent effect.

Then we will build enormous office blocks on the edge of the river.

What?! More buildings?!

Yep, that's it. That's the Premier's big plan: to build more buildings... bigger buildings... right to the edge of our dying river.

So, while one hand of the government continues to destroy the river, what will the other hand be doing? The "river levy" "could raise $59 million a year". Which is less (by 18%) than is -- reportedly -- already being spent to "protect" the river system.

Here's my guess:

The government will pass 10% of the levy to the Swan River Trust. The Trust will employ more bureaucrats and more policy writers. 50% of the levy will be spent of publicity: brochures, leaflets, press releases. These will have no impact whatsoever. The rest of the "river levy" will simply disappear into general government spending...

Can we afford to save the Swan River? Not really.

As long as we focus on more money, more people, big projects, imitation of the rest of the world... the river will come a sad last. Saving a river costs money. Even preserving a river has a huge opportunity cost.

While we follow the policy of money and growth before all else -- we cannot afford to be sentimental. We cannot afford to have a clean river. We cannot afford to leave any "natural" environment unexploited...

Perhaps I did miss one possibility...

In my predictions, allow 1% to be dedicated to a museum exhibit. An exhibit of stuffed swans. So that our children can see what it was that we destroyed.

Independent thinking & independent analysis of your problems. Agamedes Consulting: Support for your thought. email nick leth at gmail dot com