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John Quiggin

Should economists know their own history >

There’s been a recent fuss in various media arising from a tweet from economist Ben Golub regarding astonishment that economists haven’t “worked through” Smith and Marx. English professor Alex Moskowitz chimed in with a claim that economics can’t be a real discipline because economists don’t know the history of their own discipline. This claim is oversold as regards Smith. Every econ student gets the pin factory example of scale economies and the standard quote about the butcher,...

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Monday Message Board

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’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

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RBA policy is putting all our futures at risk

I wrote this for a Guardian panel. The published version was cut for space reasons, so here’s the full version The central concern expressed by the Reserve Bank in defending its high-interest rate policy is that expectations of higher inflation may become entrenched, requiring a further, more painful round of contractionary monetary policy in the future. Even after stripping out the effects of various “cost of living measures”, the RBA’s estimated core inflation rate is only just...

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Suggestions for a small experiment

Last week, I gave a presentation at the 2024 Australian Basic Income Fellows Workshop. Most of the talks were about Basic Income trials, which have been undertaken around the world. I focused on something more modest but perhaps more achievable: getting evidence on the effects of Scrapping or Scaling Back Mutual Obligation and Income Management. You can download the Powerpoint presentation here or see the slides on my Substack Share this:Like Loading...

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Monday Message Board

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’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

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Monday Message Board

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’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

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Trump’s dictatorship is a fait accompli

What can Americans do? What should Australia do? A few weeks ago, I drew up a flowchart to estimate the probability that Trump would establish a dictatorship in the US, which looked, at the time, like an even money bet. We don’t need to speculate any more. Trump has announced the dictatorship, and there is no sign of effective resistance. The key elements so far include Extremists announced for all major positions, with a demand that they be recess appointments, not subject to...

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Armistice Day

The Great War continues, more than 100 years later Yesterday was November 11, the anniversary of the armistice which ended fighting on the Western Front of what was then called the Great War. It’s always an occasion for sad reflection on my part, thinking about the pointlessness of the massive sacrifices of the War, which achieved nothing except to set the scene for worse disasters to come. But it’s particularly sad in a year when the forces unleashed by the War have come back to...

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The 35-hour week is overdue[1]

Back in 1947, the standard Australian working week was reduced from 44 hours to 40. In 1983, 36 years later, the working week was reduced to 38 hours. That was more than 40 years ago, and there has been a lot of technological progress since then. It makes sense to take some of the benefits of that progress in the form of shorter working hours. I’ve been an active supporter of the movement for a Four-Day week, but progress has been slow. Some of the moment has been dissipated by the...

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Monday Message Board

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’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like Loading...

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