John Quiggin

I’m trying to get the MS of Economic Consequences of the Pandemic finished by May, while chasing a moving target. Over the fold, I return to a favorite topic of mine, the role of generational change. I’ve spent a lot of time pointing out the silliness of most talk about generations, but in the process I’ve learned quite a bit about the nuggets of insight that can be mined by thinking in these terms. Comments much appreciated. Happy for anyone to raise nitpicking points about typos....

That’s the title of my latest piece in Independent Australia, an extract from The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Hi everyone. I haven’t been posting much lately. Partly, there have been minor technical problems. But mostly, I’ve been frantically busy trying to finish the draft MS of Economic Consequences of the Pandemic, and haven’t found time to extract pieces suitable for comment. Normal service should resume soon. 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...

Since the 1980s there has been massive privatisation and outsourcing of Australia’s utilities and infrastructure, such as public transport, power generation, tollways, communications, information technology, airlines, ports and water. It was driven by an ideology which venerated the market and the profit motive, yet never enjoyed public support. What is the balance sheet of 40 years of privatisation in Australia? What is the way forward? The trend to privatisation has been worldwide....

That’s the title of a piece I ran in Independent Australia last week. It’s part of my book-in-progress, The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

That’s the title of my latest piece in Inside Story (republished with a slightly different title in The Canberra Times). It draws on a shorter summary I published here. Read it at Inside Story, and comment here. 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...

As I’ve mentioned previously, when I started work on Economic Consequences of the Pandemic, I assumed I’d be writing a polemic against austerity, as I did in Zombie Economics. Based on the last crisis, it seemed likely that any stimulus measures would be wound back rapidly, leading to a sluggish and limited recovery. That’s pretty much what is happening in Australia, where I live, but not in the US, where the book will be published. On the contrary, Biden’s policies are pretty much...

Thanks to everyone who has made useful comments on my recent posts. I need to move on to present concerns, so I’m finishing my writing on the post-War Golden Age (or whatever you would like to call this period). Here are some thoughts I still need to organize Over the period since 1900 as a whole, there hasn’t been any clear trend in the rate of technological progress for the US. However, from 1950 to the early 1970s, the US economy was closer to the ‘frontier’ determined by...