Wednesday 9 December 2009

I'm a creative artist

In response to my email of a while back, ACC has decided to classify me as:
92420 Creative Artists, Musicians, Writers and Performers
I've always thought that economics was best placed in the Arts rather than Commerce anyway.

Still no word on what the earnings threshold is for having to start paying a separate ACC levy.

A friend tells me that he had a similar experience a while back, though he was above the reporting threshold. On calling ACC to confirm that he wasn't involved in manufacturing (the default category, it seems), they asked what he was involved in. He asked what's the cheapest category. They said "data entry". He said "data entry". And they were happy with that.

If I ever wind up actually having an invoice, I may petition to be reclassified as a data entry guy. Transcribing results from Stata into Excel counts, right? (and, no, Outreg won't work easily for what I'm trying to do...)

Come to think of it, if data entry has the lowest risk, what does that say about theories of low status leading to stress and bad health? If depression is work-related, and ACC covers for mental health issues related to work.... We have good reason to expect that ACC's premia aren't fully risk adjusted, but I don't think anybody's claimed they have the rank order wrong, just that it's too compressed. Hmm.

Data entry...the high school guidance counselor, on seeing the results of my standardized tests around the 10th grade, in which my "clerical speed and accuracy" score had me at the 100th percentile (none of the other bits at all shabby, save mechanical reasoning, which was only around 75th and was only that good because I kept thinking back to playing with the Lego Technix set...), suggested I might wish to become a clerk. Transcribing Stata results makes me wonder whether she wound up being right after all about actual outcomes....

Ok, back to the clerical work....

2 comments:

  1. Data entry? Creativity? Climate scientists are set for an increase in their risk status, surely.

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