John Quiggin

My latest piece in Inside Story. Standfirst is Has the Coalition learnt the wrong lessons from Margaret Thatcher? Thatcher saw that the existing system has failed and proposed a radical alternative. In that sense, we need to emulate her. We don’t need to trawl through the leftovers of her program: an uninspiring ragbag of policies that turned out to be either unworkable (money supply targeting, for instance) or so politically toxic that they are unsaleable even forty years...

In a recent post, I pointed out that long-term (30 year) real interest rates on safe (AAA) bonds had fallen to zero, and suggested that this meant the end of capitalism, at least in the sense that the term was understood in classical economics. On the other hand, stock markets have been doing very well. So what is going on? This is a complicated story and I’m still working it out,An important starting point is the fact that the most profitable companies, particularly tech companies,...

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 Like this:Like Loading...

Ever since I wrote Work for All with John Langmore back in 1994, I’ve been pushing the idea that a path to full employment requires an expansion of publicly provided services. For about the same length of time, Bill Mitchell has been putting forward similar (but not identical) proposals. At some point in this process, Bill became one of the advocates of what’s called Modern Monetary Theory, which makes the point that taxes don’t (directly) “fund” public expenditure. Rather, they ensure...

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...

That’s the title of an article I published in Independent Australia last week. An important part of it was support for the German Kurzarbeit scheme, which pays most of the wages lost by employees when working hours are shortened due to the recession. There’s a striking contrast with the push by Josh Frydenberg to allow employers to cut hours and wages at will. It’s pretty clear that the days of “we are all in this together” are fast disappearing. Share this:Like this:Like...

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 Like this:Like Loading...

Although my book-in-progress is called The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic, a lot of it will deal with changes that were already underway, and have only been accelerated by the pandemic. This was also true of Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace. The economic order destroyed by the Great War was already breaking down, as was discussed for example, in Dangerfield’s Strange Death of Liberal England. Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened...

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen to zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk. If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism....

One of the consequences of the pandemic has been the realization that reliance on the ready availability of imported goods may be a problem in a crisis. This isn’t new, particularly in relation to oil, which plays an outsized role in geopolitics. The supposed need to protect sea lanes, and particularly oil supplies against disruption has been a major part of the rationale for naval defence spending. And we have repeatedly been criticised for failing to maintain stocks of refined...