John Quiggin

Fighting zombies is a tiresome business. Even when you think you’ve finally killed them, they bounce back as often as not. But it has to be done, and there are some benefits. When you see a supposedly serious person or organization pushing zombie ideas, it’s an indication that nothing they put out should be presumed to be serious. There can be few zombies more thoroughly undead than nuclear power in general, except for the idea that nuclear power is a sensible option for Australia. The...

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.

I’ve just given a couple of talks focusing on inequality, one for the Global Change Institute at UQ, following a presentation by Wayne Swan and the second at a conference organized by the TJ Ryan Foundation (including great talks by Peter Saunders, Sally McManus, and others), where I was responding to a paper by Jim Stanford from the Centre for Future Work. Because I was speaking second in both cases, I didn’t prepare a paper or slides, but tailored my talk to complement the one before....

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

After another long break, it’s time for another weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Side discussions to sandpits, please. Absolutely no personal criticism of other commenters.

I guess I should call this an irregular email, since I haven’t sent one for a few weeks. As usual, I’d appreciate any compliments, brickbats, suggestions on things I should say more or less about and so on. [email protected] Adani, energy and climate action Farmers for Climate Action commissioned me to do a report on the proposed loan to the Adani Rail Project, focusing on alternative investments in the agricultural sector. It was release at the weekend, and got some coverage, including...

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.

That’s the title of a presentation I gave to a workshop on UBI run by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. I wasn’t able to attend in person so I called in for my session. The result is that I can’t give a summary of the event, but Tim Hollo has one here. My presentation is here. Also, there’s a Facebook group and a couple of useful links.

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.

I’ve seen quite a number of church leaders making statements in support of a No response to the Turnbull government’s ABS survey on equal marriage. In nearly every case, there isn’t much of an argument on the merits of why the state should enforce their views about marriage. Rather, they express concerns that, if equal marriage is allowed, they will be forced to conduct marriages, or to employ members of same-sex married couples. This seems like a nonsense to me. If that is the real...