John Quiggin

To say I’m depressed about the current state of Australian politics would be an understatement. But of all the things that depress me, the possibility of a section 44 case against Josh Frydenberg is the most gratuitously awful. If someone had said, ten years ago, that the Australian-born son of a Jewish refugee was ineligible to stand for Parliament because he had failed to secure necessary documents from the neo-fascist government that currently rules Hungary, they would have been...

A month after Adani got the final approvals for its Carmichael mine, it’s still hard to work out what’s going on with Adani and the Galilee Basin in general. Adani has been making a fair bit of noise, but the project still seems to consist of tree clearing and road building. To get past this stage, and without significant in-house experience of major projects, Adani needs partners: engineering design firms, construction contractors, and so on. And even if no external funding is...

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

The Melbourne launch for Economics in Two Lessons, will be at Readings Hawthorn Wednesday 17 July and also at University House, Melbourne Uni, 4-6 pm Friday 19 July. Free, no booking required. It looks as if there have been some problems with the publicity, so if anyone can share this with Melbourne friends likely to be interested, I’d be very grateful. Like this:Like Loading...

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...

I’ve been writing for a while about the global emergence of a three party system, consisting of (a) the Trumpist right, (b) a green-socialist-social democratic left and (c) the remains of the former consensus between hard and soft versions of neoliberalism. How does this analysis look after the Federal election and Labor’s defeat? The first point to observe is the crucial role of essentially random shocks. As with Trump and Brexit, we’d be having a very different discussion if...

The Melbourne launch for Economics in Two Lessons, will be at Readings Hawthorn Wednesday 17 July and also at University House, Melbourne Uni, 4-6 pm Friday 19 July. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Here’s my email update. Sign up if you’d like to get it delivered to your mailboxHi all,It’s been quite a while since my last email news, which I sent out before the May election.  Following Labor’s loss, I resolved to avoid commentary on political strategy or day-to-day politics, and to spend more time thinking about global and long term issues, such as climate change and the global choice between socialist and Trumpist futures.I’ve mostly stuck to that resolve discussed the...

That’s the headline for my latest piece in The Conversation. Probably a better choice than the one I supplied. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Recent elections (notably including those for the European Parliament) have shown the evolution of what I’ve called a three-party system, replacing the alternation between soft and hard versions of neoliberalism dominant since the 1980s. The three parties in this analysis are the (a) remaining elements of the neoliberal consensus, (b) Trumpists[1], and (c) leftists, defined as broadly as possible to encompass greens, feminist, social democrats, old-style US liberals, as well as those...