Weekly roundup Saturday 18 July
Capital investment — the path to productivity.
Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.
Productivity
Productivity, an explainer: beware of politicians making categorical statements about productivity — it’s much more complex.
Productivity and tax reform: the government’s tax reforms should boost investment in real assets, rather than fuelling property speculation, thus improving productivity.
Productivity — who benefits? We need to improve productivity, but higher productivity will flow into wages only if it is not diverted into excess profits and benefits for non-wage earners.
Housing
Hot houses: there are low-cost ways we can improve our comfort while reducing emissions and cutting our energy bills.
The cooling house market: contrary to John Howard’s assured opinion, Australians are quite supportive of lower house prices.
Other economics
The economics of immigration: severe cuts to immigration would be dumb, really dumb.
The (enforced) joy of shopping: ideological zealots who designed the National Electricity Market have forced us to waste our time shopping around, just for the sake of “competition”.
Politics
The Coalition’s woes, or the Liberal Party’s woes: the Liberal Party is in dreadful strife, but there is a way out if they can pop out of their far-right bubble.
One Nation under scrutiny: an economist and the public in general give Hanson poor marks, and her Rinehart-inspired ideas on northern Australia are the stuff of fantasy fiction.
Gambling reform: the government’s intransigence on gambling reform gives a chance for the Liberal Party to resurrect itself.
Public ideas:
Gramsci’s ideas explained: at last, a Marxist whose ideas can be summarized in plain language.
July 14
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
