News media love to do this on a personal level too. Every month CBC runs a story about how Canadians' household debt (mostly mortgages) is 170% of their dispos

News media love to do this on a personal level too. Every month CBC runs a story about how Canadians' household debt (mostly mortgages) is 170% of their disposable income. It isn't completely meaningless to compare these, but the units need to be right: Rather than "170%" (which scares people because it's more than 100%!) we should say that household debt is equal to 20 months of disposable income.