On of the more interesting responses to this article was made by Leith van Onselen: he wrote:
>>> I think this analysis fails the commonsense test miserably (See The house that pocket change built , August 17). According to Mr Joye, the average Australian household has, in 1993 dollars, $43,000 of disposable income left over after mortgage payments. When converted to 2011 dollars, this equates to around $70,000 AFTER TAX!
How is such an amount even possible given that the average PRE-TAX full-time earnings is currently only $70,000?
It seems that Mr Joye has once again used the National Accounts measure of disposable income, which includes many sources that are not able to actually be spent by households, including compulsory superannuation contributions (locked away until retirement) and owner-occupied imputed rents. <<<
I'm not in the imminent housing disaster camp (rather that caution is advised), but the author of the article does seem to too often cherry pick the data he uses.
