Weekly roundup Saturday 27 September
Australians lead the world in gambling losses
Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.
Economics
Gambling costs revealed yet again: Australian households are blowing $3000 a year on gambling, and that’s only a partial cost estimate.
Private health insurance: It’s a high-cost, distortionary and regressive privatized tax which past Labor governments worked hard to eradicate.
The Optus outage: We’re experiencing the consequences of poorly considered privatizations in the 1990s.
Trends in Australia’s wellbeing: The HILDA survey shows we’re becoming more tolerant, and our material standards are holding up, but we’re becoming more stressed and lonelier.
Education
University governance: A corporatized managerial model has done great damage to our universities.
Possibilities for our universities: Bill Shorten returns from Kyiv with ideas for Australia’’s universities.
Educational pathways after high school: Ten years on from high school there are wide differences in skills and qualifications – boys from state high schools make the poorest progress.
Politics
Sussan Ley on Palestine: Ley’s approach to US Republican Congresspeople was gauche and cringeworthy.
Cartel politics: If Labor and the Coalition were corporations in the private marketplace they’d be up before the ACCC for collusion.
Urban savages: A Guardian journalist exposes a tribe of savages gathered in the business end of Melbourne.
Public ideas
Francis Fukuyama: History hasn’t ended – technologies are still shaping human societies in wondrous but scary ways.
The Ig Nobels
If you have comments, corrections, or links to other relevant sources, I’d like to hear from you. Please send them to Ian McAuley — ian, at the domain name ianmcauley.com
