That’s the headline for my latest piece in Crikey reproduced over the fold.

Labor’s poor performance in the by-election seat of Upper Hunter, held by the National Party since 1931 has provoked a new round of soul-searching about the party’s failure to maintain the support of its traditional ‘base’. Implicitly or explicitly, the ‘base’ is assumed to be typified by male manual workers, particularly those in rural and regional areas like Upper Hunter, or in industrial cities like Whyalla.

In historical terms, this makes sense. The Labor party was founded after the defeat of the shearer’s strike in 1891, and the party long drew much of its support from workers like shearers, canecutters and miners, as well as from urban factory workers, railway workers and so on. There is

2nd out of 7 in my age group in the Brisbane Marathon. While I often get 1/1, genuine podiums are a rarity for me. Thanks to Nancy for Bike support on lots of training runs https://results.sportseventservices.com.au/results.aspx?CId=16287&RId=6130&EId=1&dt=1

I’m raising money for MS Brissie to the Bay. You can donate here
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A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such.
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Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page
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In a case of l’esprit de l’escalier, I just worked out the perfect parenthetical addition to this piece that was published in Inside Story, responding to a string of pro-natalist pieces in the New York Times and elsewhere. The central point is that the economic model in which strong young workers support elderly retirees is outdated and will only become more so.

A sharp fall in births during 2020 has provoked a wave of handwringingabout the implications of an ageing population. The decline can’t be attributed solely to the pandemic, since most of the babies born in 2020 were conceived before the pandemic began. However, it appears to have accelerated as the impact of the pandemic has been felt.

Some of the complaints reflect old-fashioned, not to say primitive, concerns about

Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

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That’s the self-explanatory title of my latest piece in Inside Story
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Unsurprisingly, the forced grounding of an airliner flying over Belarus, and the arrest of a critical journalist on board has provoked a burst of whataboutery from Russia and a reciprocal round of ‘false equivalence’ from the West.

The parallel case is that of the forced landing of the Bolivian presidential plane, with President Evo Morales on board, on the basis of the false suspicion that it was also carrying Edward Snowden. The grounding, at the behest of the Obama Administration, was carried out by European governments (France, Spain, Portugal and Italy) which refused to allow the plane transit through their air space. Faced with the risk of running out of fuel, the plane landed in Austria, and was eventually allowed to proceed. This conduct was of a piece with Obama’s

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such.
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Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page
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The thylacine in the headline is the long sought and now extinct, budget surplus. My latest in Inside Story.
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Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

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… is set out over the fold. I’m confident readers who take a little time to think about it will realise it’s far superior to existing policy, and to any alternative proposed so far. (Previously posted at Crooked Timber in 2011)
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. Instead, it’s a flight of fancy. That’s the tile of my latest piece in The Conversation. Read there, comment here.
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Here’s my latest email news.
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I spend quite a bit of time (more than I should) engaged in Twitter debates with advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Some are generally sensible, while others are convinced they have learned a deep secret which enables us to have whatever we want without paying for it. Unfortunately, the sensible ones (Meaningful Monetary Theory) don’t do the hard work of correcting the others (Magical Monetary Theory)

A couple of tweets referring to the latter group (followed by the usual long and confused set of responses)

A striking feature of #MMT discussion is that it starts from a presumption of failure. Always supposed to be lots of unemployed resources that can be mobilised by fiscal policy .

When MMT advocates (or anyone else) start suggesting rationing and forced saving are

Once again, I’m trying to combine exercise and fundraising, in this case for the MS Brissie to the Bay Appeal.

Please donate to help me raise $2500 for multiple sclerosis research and help for patients and their families .I’m running a marathon in June, so I’m going to go with virtual fundraising, instead of taking part in the physical ride. My aim will be to run 300km and cycle 500km over May and June, and to raise $2500. Feel free to suggest challenges I could undertake to encourage donations.
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I sent a (very rough) draft manuscript of The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic off to Yale University Press last week. Still a lot of work to be done, but I’ll have a bit more spare time now. So, I’m hoping to get a bit more blogging done.
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Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page
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Adani (now ludicrously renamed Bravus) is pushing ahead with the Carmichael mine-rail-port project, but the financial and reputational costs keep mounting. Having been forced to finance the mine and rail project out of its own funds, Adani is now finding that its Adani Ports business (of which the Abbot Point coal terminal is only a small part) is becoming equally toxic. PIMCO, once its biggest bondholder announced that it would no longer invest in new bond issues. At the same time, S&P reversed a decision to include Adani Ports in its sustainability index because of investments in Myanmar – without the continuous focus of critics, this investment might have escaped notice.The name changes under which Adani Mining became Bravus and Adani Abbot Point became North Queensland Export

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.

To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such.
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Back again with another Monday Message Board.

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link

http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page
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I’m racing to get a draft manuscript of The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic, not helped by the fact that Biden keeps doing pretty much what I think he should do. More of the fold. Comments greatly appreciated, as always.

Like Keynes’ Londoner in the aftermath of the Great War, we are emerging from the pandemic into a world where the certitudes of the past have crumbled into dust. Balanced budgets, free trade, credit ratings, financial markets, above all free markets; these ideas have ceased to command any belief.

The failure of these ideas evident since the GFC and, in many respects, since the beginning of the 21st century. It have sunk in gradually as the neoliberal political class formed in the 1980s and 1990s has passed from the scene, replaced by younger people whose

Writing in the New York Times, Elizabeth Bruenig makes the case against an alliance of convenience between liberals and “woke” corporations against the threat posed to democracy by Trumpism . After acknowledging how desperate the situation has become, she presents the argument, to which I’ll respond bit by bit

Capital is unfaithful. It can, and does, play all sides. Many of the courageous businesses that protested North Carolina’s 2016 “bathroom bill,” for instance, also donated to political groups that helped fund the candidacies of the very politicians who passed the bill.

This is the nature of alliances of convenience. When the Western Allies joined Stalin to fight against Hitler they had no (or at least few) illusions about him, and didn’t rely on him to keep his word any

Updating an old aphorism, “A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money. But how much is a trillion dollars, really? Over the fold an extract from The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic.

The crises of the 21st century have commonly resulted in emergency spending of the order of a trillion dollars or more.

When the Bush Administration made the case for the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003, it was suggested that the venture might pay for itself as had been the case with the first Gulf War [cash contributions from allies more than paid for the direct costs of US forces]. In fact, the director of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Lindsay, was fired for suggesting that the cost might be as much as $200 billion.

By the time the US forces were

As I argued recently, the decline of soft neoliberalism in the US Democratic Party can be explained largely in terms of generational replacement. What about hard neoliberalism and the Republican Party?

After four years of the Trump Administration, and a few months of post-election madness, the Republican Party has completed a transition that has been going on for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Republicans were a hard neoliberal party, spending most of their policy effort on tax cuts and deregulation and using white grievance politics to attract votes. Now the situation is reversed. The Republicans are a white grievance party, whose targets include ‘woke corporations’, However, they still attempt to attract support from corporations by advocating tax cuts. While any pretence

In discussions about Universal Basic Income, lots of people are attracted by the idea of making things as simple as possible. Sadly, that doesn’t work well once you take a closer look.

The simplest UBI would pay every Australian an amount equal to the single age pension, which is just above the poverty line. That’s $20000/yr per person or $500 billion for a population of 25 million, about equal to total Federal government expenditure. That would replace about $180 billion in existing social welfare spending. That leaves $320 billion, approximately equal to total revenue from personal and income taxes.

To fill the gap, we would need either to double income tax revenue, scrap all other public spending, or some mixture of the two. Assuming that’s not feasible, we need to start

Back again with another Monday Message Board.

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Over at Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen links to an interesting (long) article on the relationship between the second and third US presidents (Adams and Jefferson). Adams comes out looking decidedly better, I think

My comment:

This is part of the general process of re-evaluation that has followed, with a long delay, the Civil Rights Movement. An extreme example is Calhoun, presented as part of the ‘Great Triumvirate’ in the traditional history, and now being cancelled everywhere. But most of the US Presidents from Jefferson to Jackson (until recently, the Dems held annual J-J dinners) are being downgraded because they were enmeshed in slavery, the big exception being JQ Adams. Washington has mostly escaped this process, the fact that he freed his slaves in his will being

As the 25th of April approaches, Australian attention is focused on Anzac Day, the anniversary of the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. But the rest of the world is looking at another, even more horrific, and closely related anniversary. On 24 April 1915, as the invasion fleet of which the Anzacs were part approached, the Turkish government began arresting Armenian leaders and intellectuals, the first step in a genocidal campaign which owuld ultimately claim at least a million lives.

The two events were closely related. Both as Christians and as an ethnic minority with a large population in Russia, the Armenians were seen by the Turkish regime as potential traitors. The genocidal policy aimed to reduce Armenian numbers to a point where they could not pose a threat. The imminence