John Quiggin

My latest newsletter is here Opening para Labor has finally released its climate policy, which is just ambitious enough to differentiate it from Morrison’s do-nothingism. Apart from that, and process issues like the introduction of a federal version of ICAC, it seems unlikely that there will be any significant policy differences between the parties at the forthcoming election. Labor’s support for high-income tax cuts and budget “repair” means any spending initiatives will be...

I finished this article just as the Morrison government announced it was abandoning its proposal for voter ID laws. So, it ran with some hasty rewriting. Might be useful if the issue resurfaces. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Back again with 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. http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Labor’s commitment to a 2030 target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent is a pleasant surprise. I expected 35 per cent and was confident it wouldn’t be more than 40. In essence, the 43 per cent target a restatement of the goal taken to the 2019 election. The difference is within the margin of measurement error and appears to reflect the need not to reannounce a policy that had previously been abandoned. The commitment is a surprise because it follows a series of announcements...

I was going to follow up my post on Labor’s tax and expenditure policies (effectively identical to LNP) with one on climate, pointing out the remaining difference – Labor’s 2019 proposal for a vehicle fuel efficiency target. Given that Morrison had tangled himself up with his backflip on electric vehicles after snarking about “abolishing the weekend” this seemed like one policy that would survive. But Albanese never misses a chance to disappoint, and it’s been reported he’ll dump...

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on. To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such. Like this:Like Loading...

Back again with 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. http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

I was puzzled by Anthony Albanese’s Budget reply speech in May this year, which put forward only one alternative policy, a “$10 billion social housing fund”, which proved on inspection to be an off-budget piece of spurious financial engineering that, if all went well might generate $500 million a year for housing. The government already has four or five similar funds and of course the much larger Future fund. What puzzled me was that Albanese’s response seemed to fall between two...

The New Yorker is running a profile of the anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar. Reading it, I was unconvinced by the implied response to the obvious objection, “if life is so bad, why not kill yourself”, namely that suicide is painful in itself and causes pain to others. I searched a bit, and discovered that, not only had Harry Brighouse covered the book at Crooked Timber soon after it came out, but I had made the same objection in comments[1], which I’ll reproduce for...

… Just joking, this is the Greens A reduction in the inequities in the current tax and transfer system, including but not limited to: reform of the taxation of trusts, in order to reduce complexity and minimise tax avoidance;removing subsidies for the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels;redirecting funding from subsidising private health insurance towards direct public provision;reforms to the taxation of superannuation to benefit lower income earners;strengthening the...