Computer Suggests Divorce-led Recovery
SUNDAY AGE
Sunday March 15, 1992
WHY do economists so often get it wrong? It's because their models don't take proper account of human nature. And that's where the Real World (patent pending) Economic Modelling comes in _ the only computer predictions based on how people really behave.
Our computer forecast of the effect of the Keating package suggests: UNEMPLOYMENT: Unemployment will fall faster than indicated by Treasury, due to the inclusion of the ``windfall multiplier". This describes the human tendency to spend any windfall cheque like Keating's $125 family bonus at least seven times over.
First mum replaces the busted lamp, then dad comes home with the new toaster, then nanna turns up with a two-bar heater, and then you all spend up big at Pizza Hut while you talk about what else you're going to snap-up.
Indeed, our computer finds that the phrase ``Oh, that cheque from the government will cover that" will be used to excuse spending of an average $875.50 per family _ in some cases ranging up to a $45,000 new car and trip around the world.
GDP: And that's all before the cheque actually slips through the mailbox. Once it does, our computer forecasts a sharp rise in the divorce rate _ the result of bitter family divisions on how to spend the cash.
The subsequent acrimonious divorces will increase GDP by an estimated two per cent as the newly separated go shopping for their own linen and crockery.
Production of single doonas alone is expected to rise fourfold.
SMALL BUSINESS: Half of these suddenly-single people will, of course, be men. Men who've become rather too comfortable in marriage; who, let's face it, have let themselves go.
Featherbedded and protected, just like Australian industry, they will now be exposed to the brutal world of competiton: to wit, The Ambassador Nite Spot on a Saturday night, fighting for a new girlfriend.
Barbers, clothes stores, exercise gyms, balding clinics, alcohol detox centres: all will boom as the newly-exposed men try desperately to look marriageable.
The resultant steep rise in GDP will, of course, be partly offset by a sudden drop in beer consumption and gambling receipts.
TRANSPORT: Australia's efficient new rail network will cause a significant shift from road travel, with devastating effects on Australia's hundreds of roadside olde crafte shoppes. Our model shows $2.3 million lost production of toilet roll holders and a $1.2 million haircut in the frilly Kleenex box business.
Why not believe our predictions instead of the economists? Not only are we predicting strong recovery; our assumptions about how the world works could hardly be more unlikely than theirs.
© 1992 SUNDAY AGE