John Quiggin

Henry Farrell’s recent post on the irrelevance of conservative intellectuals reminded me of this one from 2013, which concluded Conservative reform of the Republican party is a project that has already failed. The only question is whether the remaining participants will choose hackery or heresy. Overwhelmingly, the choice has been hackery (or, a little more honorably, silence). The case for hackery is put most clearly by Henry Olsen. Starting from the evident fact that most Republican...

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.

Thanks to everyone who the first seven chapters of my book-in-progress, Economics in Two Lessons. I’ve tried to think about all of them and respond to as many as possible, but I’m seeking comments from quite a few sources and may have missed some. Feel free to remind me if you think you have a point that’s been overlooked., I’ve just posted a draft of Chapter 8:Unemployment. This is one of the most important chapters in the book where I confront a central error in both Hazlitt and...

The proposal of the pompously named “Monash Group” that public funds should be allocated to investment in coal-fired power stations is, of course, absurd. Leaving aside its environmental effects, new coal-fired power is far more expensive than renewables or gas. Nevertheless, the proposal is welcome in a number of respects. First, in combination with Turnbull’s Snowy 2.0 proposal, it represents a repudiation, by the conservative side of politics, of the ideology of privatisation. From...

Lachlan Harris and Andrew Charlton have a piece in the Fairfax press decrying the collapse of centrism in Australia. There are some problems with their data. As William Bowe has pointed out, the change in voter attitudes described by Harris and Charlton as “polarisation” looks more like a straighforward increase in support for the left, rising from 19.5 per cent to 31.4 per cent over the period 1996 to 2016. Measures of voter disaffection show no consistent trend over the period except...

Thanks to everyone who the first six chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. That brings us to the end of Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers. Now its time for Lesson Two: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity costs we face as a society. I’ll start with a brief intro and then the draft of Chapter 7: Property rights, and income distribution As usual, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement. The book so...

Most of the political commentariat were convinced that Bill Shorten had got things badly wrong by announcing his policy on dividend imputation immediately before the Batman by-election. It was even more striking that, despite the pressure, Shorten didn’t cave into demands for changes to the policy. Michelle Grattan, for example, described the policy as an “own goal“. After Labor’s easy win, she backed off a little bit, but still claimed that Labor “has a selling job“. M Maybe so, but I’d...

Is the ball-tampering crisis: (a) A sign of our national obsessions with sport, trivia and scandals at the expense of more important issues; (b) A symbol of the socially corrosive and corrupting effects of neoliberalism; (c) The End of Western Civilization As We Know It Vote below

The Grattan Institute has just released a report blaming high electricity network costs on public ownership and excessive reliability standards. I commented on a draft of the report, but there wasn’t much change in relation to my comments. My comments are over the fold. Let me offer the following, slightly ad hominem argument. Grattan has backed the National Energy Guarantee, a radical change in Australia’s energy policy, which was justified mainly by the occurrence of a single blackout...

Francis Bator, the economist who popularized the term “market failure”, has died at the age of 92 after being hit by a car. His NY Times obituary is here. Francis’ passing is a cause of sadness for me as my book, Economics In Two Lessons draws heavily on his work from the 1950s and 1960s. He had read excerpts on Crooked Timber and corresponded with me about it, much to my surprise and delight. I was looking forward to sending him the manuscript but now I won’t get the chance.