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Keywords: Keynes

  • ECONOMICS

    Review: The Shortest History of Economics

    • David James
    • 22 March 2024

    Economics may be useless for forecasting, and its assertions can be overly simplistic. But it is a language that should be understood, and here is a good place to start. In simple and clear prose, Leigh spans the history of human economic activity, beginning in prehistoric times and ending with the modern day.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Supply to survive

    • Julian Butler
    • 31 March 2022

    In 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic raged globally, as Australia shut its borders and some states shut in their people, massive government income support was introduced. The government was a little slow coming to recognise the need for such measures. Once they had, they wanted the support rolled out as quickly as possible. Frydenberg, Scott Morrison and their colleagues recognised that a demand side boost was absolutely necessary to sustain economic activity. The government was uncomfortable, though, with this approach.  

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  • ECONOMICS

    Our economy needs democratic oversight, not the unleashing of animal spirits

    • John Falzon
    • 06 May 2021
    23 Comments

    In a recent speech to business leaders, Prime Minister Morrison made the remarkable claim that ‘we are going to meet our [climate change] ambitions with the smartest minds, the best technology and the animal spirits of capitalism.’ This is straight from the neoliberal playbook, the doxa that the role of government is to get out of the way to make room for those animal spirits so as to pander to the fantasies of the wealthy few.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The saga of zany Granny's memory box

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 31 July 2019
    6 Comments

    While this saga was going on, I read an alarming piece about the transient nature of the digital world. Mobile phones get stolen and photos not backed up are irrevocably lost; flash drives and their capacities do not last forever. 'Print out' was the author's advice. Who would have thought?

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  • ECONOMICS

    NZ's riposte to modern economic myths

    • David James
    • 02 July 2019
    5 Comments

    While money can be transacted for things that are bad — air pollution, road deaths, cigarette ads — as long as more transactions occur, it creates the illusion the economy is growing, which, ipso facto, is good. Thus, Japan's GDP rose sharply after the tsunami disaster. New Zealand's initiative will track better what is really happening in the country.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Economic doom looms in Oz's game of homes

    • David James
    • 12 December 2017
    1 Comment

    It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where the game of musical chairs in Australia will come to a shuddering end, imperilling the banks and dragging the economy into a deep recession. As we saw in the GFC in America and Europe, government money will be thrown at the banks to rescue them at the expense of ordinary citizens.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    2015 in review: 'Unhappy' Abbott years end

    • Tony Kevin
    • 13 January 2016
    5 Comments

    Now is an exciting moment for Australia, after all the low points of the past two years. We can look forward to a real return to greater civil discourse and intellectual integrity in politics. It will be good if the parties can set aside the negative energy that was brought to the Parliament and return to an informed contest of ideas, for there is much to debate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Moving on after two unhappy years

    • Tony Kevin
    • 16 September 2015
    14 Comments

    Now is an exciting moment for Australia, after all the low points of the past two years. We can look forward to a real return to greater civil discourse and intellectual integrity in politics. It will be good if the parties can set aside the negative energy that was brought to the Parliament and return to an informed contest of ideas, for there is much to debate.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Why the rich are getting richer

    • David James
    • 19 November 2014
    6 Comments

    Investing capital in the production of goods and services may create jobs, but it's not the best way to make money. It's more profitable to manipulate the financial system to create more money from money, which is why the finance sector does so well. The polarisation of wealth is less extreme in Australia, but we have our own capital-driven Ponzi scheme - the residential property market, which has become an exercise in making money out of money. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Don't rob the poor to pay the rich

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 04 February 2014
    14 Comments

    The budget problems are not caused by Newstart or disability pensions, which have been declining as a proportion of economic activity. Had the Howard Government not been so generous with its tax cuts to upper and middle income groups, there would today be no budget deficit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When it comes to work and welfare, market rules Labor's roost

    • Luke Williams
    • 27 May 2013
    10 Comments

    If I was a long-term unemployed person, how would I answer the question, 'What has the ALP done for me?' 'Lots, and not much.' The Gillard Government's commitment to developing workforce skills suggests it values decent work, not just jobs, but in positing productivity as the path to prosperity it seems more Reagan than Keynes.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Ways out of economic depression

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 18 October 2012
    8 Comments

    Tony Abbott warned that Australia could go the way of Greece with excessive debt. Such claims reflect a climate of exaggerated concern about debt. Instead Australia could be taking advantage of historically low interest rates and embarking on major infrastructure projects, increasing employment and laying the basis for sustained growth in productivity.

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