There's quite a lot that went into this column and then had to be taken out for lack of space. The first draft began "The memes are out in force again I see", because it seems to me that the tax debate, like so many public debates develop more like an infection than a decent c...
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[photopress:Stoddard.jpg,full,pp_empty] Political correctness is a kind of covert censorship which silences ideas which are unacceptable to the ruling elite. But if this is true, then the ideas which are being suppressed can't be the ones we're reading in newspapers like the T...
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[photopress:volcanoaurora2_shs.jpg,full,centered] A volcano and Aurora Borealis
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The blogosphere is a useful source of word of mouth information or word of keyboard and screen as the case may be. Without some blog or other (I can't remember now) I would never have gone to see Spiderman 2. And though I didn't think it was a great movie, it was a good one an...
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[photopress:Grogblogging.jpg,full,pp_empty] In case you missed it, bloggers from around Australia met up on Saturday night for Grogblogging III. And yes, they're just as opinionated in person as they are on screen. Flashman from Electron Soup was chatting with Jozef Imrich of...
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I was expecting to be safely ensconced in Melbourne by the 28th but no. I'll still be in Canberra, so I'm going to do my best to attend the Grogblogging event at 7.30 pm at the City RSL (565 George St). Why it's at the City RSL beats me. Perhaps I'll find out on attending. Mor...
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Good news everybody! Israel Kirzner, the leading current exponent of the Austrian school of social and economic thought has won a gong in Sweden . Sweden has an interesting mix of policies, combing free trade and a dynamic, export-oriented private sector with cradle to grave w...
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My editor asked for a column on the changing of the guard from Alan Greenspan to Ben Bernanke. So that's what he got. Bernanke Handover: So far so good. It's a tried, tested and trusted truism that generals fight the last war. But some generals have the insight and courage to...
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Progressivity of transfers, around 2000 : Ratio of benefits received by poorest quintile to benefits received by richest quintile, total population [photopress:Progressivity_of_Transfers.gif,full,pp_empty] There's a new crusade on against tax churning - that's the state taking...
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All governments keep a sensitive eye on what is happening to inequality of incomes and inequality of opportunity because they want to be seen to be fair and because sharing the nation's incremental prosperity helps bind the community together. But governments are also concerne...
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The papers have recently been reporting Macquarie Bank's hunger for assets most of which share certain characteristics. Macquarie is on a buying spree that has made a splash around the world . Recently they have been either buying or bidding for a global company that leases ou...
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Jason Soon linked to an hilarious attack on Thomas Friedman on Catallaxy some months ago, and my brother just sent me a link to an interesting John Kay column on entitled "The scam of those who see the future in today" which takes a casual and amusing sideswipe at Friedman. A...
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There are some interesting comments in response to the posting of my column on the household division of labour on online opinion .
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Greens risk being seen as 'watermelons' -- green on the outside but red on the inside -- says David McKnight . By attaching themselves to the struggle for trade union rights and radical egalitarianism they are playing into the hands of critics who see them as just another bran...
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The Washington Post's George Will calls it "Something not easily distinguished from theft" . Maryland legislators passed a law this month which requires employers with 10,000 or more workers to spend at least 8% of payroll on employee health benefits. How many employers are af...
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Tony Harris's ID on Troppo is not yet set up, but I reproduce his latest column for the Fin below the fold. Some aphorisms have no place in government. Thus, honesty is not the best policy: it is better to hide the unpalatable. This desire to camouflage nasty truths explains w...
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America spends more on social benefits that Denmark, says Jacob Hacker . The difference is that the retirement pensions and healthcare benefits many Americans rely on are funded through tax breaks and employer contributions rather than the welfare state -- welfare comes as an...
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Joshua Smith (1905-1995) achieved fame as the subject of the painting by William Dobell that won the Archibald Prize in 1943. Smith and another party jointly challenged the award in court on the ground that the painting was a caricature. Correction , 7 Oct 06, Smith was not a...
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I mentioned to someone over a drink tonight that 'favourite passages' would be a good blog topic. Here's one of my favourite pieces of philosophical writing. Feel free to quote one of yours in the comments sections. It's the beginning of an early fragment - On Truth and Lie in...
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The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate comprises the US, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. As they met in Sydney last week, I kept thinking of the planet Venus. Over 95 per cent of Venus' atmosphere is carbon-dioxide or CO2. That's the prin...
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When two men kiss, is it ideologically offensive? News Limited columnist Paul Gray thinks so : My young family were among the viewers. At Christmas, they all sat down to watch the Spicks and Specks yuletide special, A Very Specky Christmas. Despite my often caustic anti-ABC co...
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In the researches set off by Don Arthur's critique of my article on 'acting tough' I came upon Keiran Healy's excellent review on Crooked Timber of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics . I'd actually raved about the symposium they'd held at the time, but reserved Healy's review for su...
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I reported the triumph of Massachusetts mandating open standards for the computer files its government would generate here . Well, for the unititiated, along with various other setbacks for open source software, things seem to be unravelling with various resignations . Microso...
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I don't often violently disagree with Nicholas Gruen. But in a recent Troppo post he argues that disadvantaged groups like America's black population are held back by their culture not just by a lack of opportunity. As evidence of this Nicholas points to a recent NBER paper by...
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David Gruen (distantly related by fraternity) 1 sent me the following abstract from a recent NBER working paper. In it some econometrics is done on a phenomenon that (I believe) was first discussed seriously in American sociology in the mid to late 50s (you'd expect economics...
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Well Troppodillians, subject to the usual caveats - I take all responsibility for errors of fact, judgement, taste and ideology, I still thank you all for helping me out on this column which has now been published. Whether you think it's any good or not, this was the most succ...
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I heard this program on PM the other day about the collapse into petrol sniffing of the aboriginal community at Uluru. In some ways a war zone would be better than this. Call it 'disadvantage' if you like, but I think that rather misses what is going on.
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Compared with a few hundred years ago the world works incredibly, almost miraculously well. But do you think of something really simple that you wonder why it isn't being done? I planned to compile a list of ten really simple things that should be done which were obvious (at l...
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I enjoyed this post by Mark B as well as Paul Gray's op ed to which he linked and many of the comments on Mark's post. A few days ago I picked up a book of essays by G Lowes Dickinson and here is an extract of the last lecture in a set of lectures he delivered in 1905 entitled...
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This week's column is on the subject of the book "Children of the lucky country" the state of children. It speaks for itself I guess, though of course in a column format one doesn't have sufficient space to spell everything out. Suffice it to say that as I read the book it see...
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A little post to get the year off to an uncontroversial start! I mentioned a book I've read - "Children of the Lucky Country" below . Here is a quote from it relating to the division of labour at home between the genders (p. 83). In the past, the way society arranged for the...
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