John Quiggin

There’s been another kerfuffle about gender-neutral language. Although it’s mostly anecdotal outrage, the main issue seems to be whether, as is claimed by traditionalists, the masculine third person pronoun should be used in cases where no gender is specified. For example, “If a student writes an essay, he should not be marked down for his choice of pronoun”. People have had fun with some extreme cases, like “since Man is a mammal, he suckles his young”.  But I think the problem can be...

The claim that our current healthcare and pension policies are unsustainable is a classic zombie idea on the political right, embodied in the regular Interngerational Reports produced by the Australian Treasury which invariably fail to mention the real threat to the future posed by climate change and environmental destruction more generally. In the US, the release of the trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare has produced <a...

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

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. Like this:Like Loading...

Thanks to everyone who commented on the first ten chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons. Here’s a draft of Chapter 11: Market failure: Information, uncertainty and financial markets. Comments, criticism and praise are welcome. Earlier draft chapters are available. These aren’t final versions, as I am now editing the entire manuscript, but you can read them to see where the book is coming from. Table of ContentsIntroduction.Chapter 1: What is opportunity cost?Chapter...

Following my critique of generational cliches in the New York Times a while back, I was invited to talk to public radio program Innovation Hub. Here’s the link. If you couldn’t get past the NYT paywall, this gives a pretty good idea of my argument.

I’m reposting this piece from 2011, as a prebuttal of  arguments like this. I give a bit more detail here. One of the most striking successes of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the “We are the 99 per cent” idea, and more specifically in the identification of the top 1 per cent as the primary source of economic problems. Thanks to #OWS, the fact that households the top 1 per cent of the income distribution now receive around 25 per cent of all income (up from 12 per cent a few...

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