John Quiggin

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 Like this:Like Loading...

This is an extract from my recent review article in Inside Story, focusing on Ellen Broad’s Made by Humans For the last thousand years or so, an algorithm (derived from the name of an Arab mathematician, al-Khwarizmi) has had a pretty clear meaning — namely, it is a well-defined formal procedure for deriving a verifiable solution to a mathematical problem. The standard example, Euclid’s algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers, goes back to 300 BCE. There are...

I’ve just done a review article for Inside Story. The headline is Will a robot take my job? but the central point is that this is the wrong question to ask. While technology has a logic of its own, what really matters is our current set of economic and social structures, the financialised version of capitalism commonly called “neoliberalism“. The article is a review of three excellent books:2062 by Toby Walsh;Made by Humans by Ellen Broad; andThe Future of Everything by Tim Dunlop Read...

The issues dominating Australian public debate are many and various But most of them can be summed up as the defence of Australian institutions that have been under attack by radical extremists. I’m referring to such institutions as the ABC, CSIRO, the weekend, public education, the union movement, the fair go our natural environment and our indigenous heritage. Mention of any of these is enough to raise a derisive sneer from the radical rightwing apparatus that dominates much of...

On the Facebook page, another extract from my book Economics in Two Lessons, due out next year. Like this:Like Loading...

Something I read a lot in political discussion is the claim “We shouldn’t be wasting time on Issue X”. Almost invariably, the writer clearly has strong views on Issue X, supports the status quo, and is aware that some change has majority support. So, their best hope is to avoid any decision at all. Of course, while statements like this logically imply that the speaker shouldn’t waste their own time on the issue, this inference is rarely drawn. The same people who tell us not to waste...

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 Like this:Like Loading...

The publication date for my new book, Economics in Two Lessons, is set for May 2019. Until then, I’m putting extracts up on a Facebook page I’ve set up. Here’s the first one, part of the Introduction. Like this:Like Loading...

In my recent piece in The Guardian, mostly about Adani, I observed The paradoxes of Adani are mirrored in the global coal market. Despite a small increase in 2017, global coal production is below its 2013 peak. Yet prices have recovered strongly, yielding big profits to existing miners and offering a seemingly tempting prospect for new mines. It turns out that this isn’t quite right. The benchmark Newcastle price, for low-ash coal with a heat content of 6000kcal/kg has risen strongly,...

I have a piece in The Guardian under the headline Adani’s rail line cut shows project is on life support but still a threat to climate, starting with the observation The recent announcement by Adani that it will halve the costs of its rail line to the proposed Carmichael coalmine by building a shorter, narrow-gauge line raises an obvious question: if such a massive cost-saving is feasible, why didn’t Adani go that way in the first place? I also address the broader question If coal is...