Journalism and other writing
LET’S start with some definitions.
Good Investment: spending on things like disadvantaged schools where you get more bang for your bucks rather than elite schools because at disadvantaged schools the extra money goes on teaching. Elite schools already spend enough on education so the extra money goes on diving pools and the like, and do not improve educational outcomes. So that is Bad Investment. Continue reading “Good debt. Bad debt. Good govt. Bad Govt”
IS Malcolm Turnbull determined to lose the 2019 election? His statement this week that the Government could underwrite the rail line for the Adani mine would have increased the anger among small businesses in the six Reef Seats.
IS Malcolm Turnbull determined to lose the 2019 election? His statement this week that the Government could underwrite the rail line for the Adani mine would have increased the anger among small businesses in the six Reef Seats. Continue reading “Electoral consequences of Adani in the Reef Seats should scare PM”
THURSDAY (26 April) will be the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It is perhaps timely to reflect on it, given the emphasis on bombing in the past couple of weeks: the bombing of Syria “in retaliation” for the use of chemical weapons; the Mother of All Bombs being dropped in Afghanistan; and the threats by North Korea to pre-emptively use nuclear bombs.
THURSDAY (26 April) will be the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It is perhaps timely to reflect on it, given the emphasis on bombing in the past couple of weeks: the bombing of Syria “in retaliation” for the use of chemical weapons; the Mother of All Bombs being dropped in Afghanistan; and the threats by North Korea to pre-emptively use nuclear bombs. Continue reading “80 years on, Guernica has lessons about bombing for us”
GOVERNMENTS, at state and federal level, are only looking at a half the “housing affordability” crisis, if that. The missing bit is that we have to go beyond merely discouraging investors from buying more houses to taking action to encourage existing investors to sell and move their money into more productive activity. Continue reading “Government has to get us out of housing mess it created”
THE Government would like us to measure its success on the “jobs and growth” illusion. It points to 103 quarters without a recession (growth). It points to increasing job vacancies and lower unemployment (jobs). And the ministers smile smugly. Continue reading “The “jobs and growth” distorted delusion”
Yesterday (31 March 2016), Australia equalled the Netherlands’ record of 103 consecutive quarters of economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, without a recession. So why aren’t the champagne corks popping? The Netherlands’ boom came with gas in 1982 and ended with the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Continue reading “The GDP delusion – don’t pop the corks just yet”
MOST economists regard hypothecation as a Bad Thing. In the financial (as distinct from the legal) world, hypothecation is where a government agrees to apply all the money raised by a particular tax to a particular area of spending. Continue reading “Fuel and health taxes the next do-nothing inequities”
The Great Barrier Reef belongs to all humanity. A Hamburg newspaper picked up last week’s column
AS OUR agile, innovative, laissez-faire, small-government Prime Minister grapples with the contradictions of regulating gas exports and propping up the dying coal industry with public money, people might ponder anew the question of who has been the worse Coalition Prime Minister in recent history. Malcolm Turnbull himself? Tony Abbott? Billy McMahon? Continue reading “And the prize for worst Coalition PM goes to?”
