John Quiggin

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

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.

The High Court has done a great job in messing up Australian democracy with its absurdly literalistic reading of the Constitutional provisions on dual citizenship. It’s now added another layer of disaster with its refusal to hear Labor’s attempt to have Liberal MP David Gillespie disqualified on the basis that he rented space to an Australia Post outlet. Of course, this case is utterly lacking in merit. Had the High Court heard it, and thrown it out without retiring for consideration, I’d...

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about stagnation in real wages and the decline of the labour share of national income. In a recent Senate Submission, I made the point that there is nothing surprising about this For the last 40 years, changes in labour market regulation have been almost uniformly anti-union and anti-worker, while public policy has been premised on the desirability of reducing wages. I saw an interesting (and, I suspect, largely unconscious) illustration of this...

Thanks to everyone who the first five chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. Now here’s the draft of Chapter 6: The opportunity cost of destruction This is the last part of the book devoted to Lesson 1 Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers. and the one where I agree mostly with Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. It seems particularly apposite 15 years after the beginning of the Iraq War. As usual, I welcome comments,...

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...

That’s my suggestion for the way Bill Shorten can resolve his continuing problems over the Adani Carmichael mine-port-rail project. To spell it out, he should set a deadline (say June 30) for Adani to achieve financial close for the entire project, and commence construction. If the deadline isn’t met, Labor should oppose the project outright. This is only a marginal variant on the position of leading Adani supporter, Jenny Hill, who suggested a six month deadline in February. So, it...

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.

When Malcolm Turnbull, as PM, first faced Bill Shorten, as Opposition Leader, I correctly surmised that this would be a contest between a bold and innovative leader, unafraid to put forward controversial policies if they were right for the country, and a timid pragmatist, tied down by secret deals with factional warlords, and standing for nothing. I just didn’t realise which was which.

Thanks to everyone who the first four chapters of my book, Economics in Two Lessons. I’m continuing with policy applications of Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers. That will be followed by Lesson 2: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity costs we face as a society. Now here’s the draft of Chapter 5. Again, I welcome comments, criticism and encouragement. The book so far is availableTable of...