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...

In the light of the recent Productivity Commission report on inequality in Australia, I thought I would repost this piece from 2016. It’s not radically dissimilar in terms of its conclusions, but is, I think, more balanced than the “nothing to see here, move on” spin that’s characterized much of the coverage of the PC report. Over the past forty years, leading developed economies, most notably the United States have experienced an upsurge in inequality of income and wealth. Most of...

Nearly seven years after I started, I’ve finally submitted the manuscript of Economics in Two Lessons to Princeton University Press. There’s still a lot of work to be done in turning it into a published book, and some changes are still needed, but this is as close to a milestone as I’m going to get. Over the fold are the Acknowledgements. As I mention, I’m sure to have omitted someone, so if you have contributed comments and your name is missing, please point this out. Also, if there’s...

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. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link Like this:Like Loading...

My son Daniel pointed me a Facebook post starting from the fact that Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Turnbull served almost identical periods as PM, and comparing their achievements. Of course, there is nothing to compare.  I can’t find the post now (another reason to hate the displacement of blogs by Facebook and Twitter) but I thought I’d give my own prize for Australia’s least significant PM. The main ground rules are that I’m counting only achievements as PM, and I’m not judging whether...

The Liberals’ disastrous result in the recent Longman by-election obviously played a major role in bringing an effective end to Malcolm Turnbull’s Prime Ministership. But the lesson drawn from the outcome by nearly all political pundits, and particularly those on the political right seems to me to be totally unfounded. The central claim is that the Liberals lost votes to One Nation, which more accurately reflected the views of their conservative basis. The corollary is that to win seats...

Since he first entered the Australian political scene as a leading proponent of republicanism, Malcolm Turnbull’s career has been one long series of disappointments, which involved failing (more or less steadily) upwards.  Barring a miracle, his career is now effectively over. In the unlikely event that he survives as PM to the next election, he is assured of electoral defeat and subsequent oblivion. But, he has one last chance for greatness. It’s now clear that  many of his Liberal...

I was asked by Bloomberg to comment on what the future holds for Turnbull and the NEG. My comments: It’s an established convention in Australian politics that a narrow victory in a leadership challenge implies the need for a subsequent challenge in which the incumbent invariably loses. So, I think Turnbull’s future is either on the backbench or early retirement from politics.  Even if he hangs on, the NEG is now finished.  It remains to be seen whether the various ad hoc interventions...

Over the fold, my latest regular email. If you would like to receive it, sign up at http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX Hi everyone As is common for academics of a certain age, I’ve been writing lots of book chapters lately, and several of the books have come out recently.  They include: Wrong Way: How Privatisation & Economic Reform Backfired, edited by Damien Cahill and Phillip Toner, which is going to be launched at Gleebooks in Sydney on Friday 21st September. I have contributed chapters...