Parts 1 and 2 outlined six alternative ways of dealing with a socially disruptive economic reform. They all assumed that the postulated reform would proceed but dealt in different ways with the social consequences. In this final segment of the paper, I consider a seventh oft-o...
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In Part I outlined four policy strategies to deal with a reform which offered good GDP outcomes but had socially disruptive and regressive effects. All four did not require redistribution. I now look at the compensation option. Option 5: Compensate the losers The four options...
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Joshua Gans quotes my recent post on broadband and VoIP approvingly which I'm pleased about because he knows a lot more about both the economics and the technology of it than me. He puts the issue pithily. "Households are not the relevant unit for purchasing broadband; neighbo...
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Draft Economists are very good at advising on the best means of achieving given policy objectives - so long as the social objectives are clearly and fully laid out for them by the politicians. But most of the time the social goals are not specifically defined and so economists...
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I'm just back from the launch at the IPA - or rather re-launch for it was first published in 1980 - of The Heart of James McAuley by Peter Coleman. It was a star studded cast of launchers. Tony's Staley and Abbott did the launching but Peter Coleman was also there to respond....
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Harry Clarke draws our attention to the demise of Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL). It has been in bad trouble for a long time. It's a very sad day. ESL was a marvellous experiment in private conservation hounded out of existence by jealous bureaucrats and the ideologues of the...
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I just ran across this abstract in the Journal of Public Economics . I reproduce it here for what it is worth. I mean that literally, as it is not me pushing a barrow. I don't have a considered view and have done very little reading on this. Anyway, here's the abstract. In 198...
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I spotted a comment in the last week that I thought would be a good starter for our weekend open thread. If I do so again in the future, there'll be another commenter of the week. The comment was from Cam in the thread on history education - which was itself a pretty high qual...
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Last night's Late Night Live had a teriffic interview with David Runciman, Lecturer in politics, Cambridge University, UK. Theorising one of the most talented and in my view ultimately tragic polititians of our age Tony Blair, Runciman wrote The Politics of Good Intentions: Hi...
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Should you be restructuring your communications? A month or so I decided to bite the bullet and fix my family and (small) business telecommunications. I thought I'd outline what I did here and follow it with some reflections which I'm hoping to research further. Currently they...
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Here's a diagram from a recent paper (pdf) on the Swedish distribution of income. It shows that the kinds of income distribution through time that Andrew Leigh and Anthony Atkinson came up with for Australia and NZ are typical of most western countries. It also shows that you...
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Saul, who needs little introduction, has kindly accepted my invitation to occasionally post on Troppo. Saul is a wise and moderate fellow and you could do worse than accord his thoughts on the economy as much weight as you give anyone else. Over the fold is an article Saul has...
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Commenter Chris Lloyd asked the other day whether I had any observations about the risks of defamation action against bloggers. As it happens I do. Moreover, it's an opportune time to muse on the subject because there's a fairly new uniform national Defamation Act that is rele...
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Hot off the press from Sarsparilla . Regular Sarsaparilla contributor Wendy James' novel Out of the Silence has been shortlisted in the 'First Crime Novel' category of the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction. How good is that ?
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I was recently banging on about the ABC and podcasting re-iterating Steven Bounds' suggestion that the ABC could lower the cost of distributing podcasts by distributing them over BitTorrent when the very next day I hear that the ABC are considering doing just that . The ABC is...
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Troppo readers will know that one of my interests in economic policy is regulation. So with the Banks Report receiving its final response from Government, I wrote a column on it which was published today in The Age. Quite a bit was cut in The Age - something that usually happe...
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Here's Stephen Mayne from today's Crikey on the ABC and podcasting. The ABC's extraordinary podcasting performance All those ABC critics who attack the national broadcaster for not attracting large audiences are eating plenty of humble pie over its extraordinary performance wh...
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Political debate Australia is starting to remind me of the balls that used to be held at uni halls of residence when I was a student. Rather than some kind of broad discourse we move from one topic to another with the media paying obeisance to an agenda set by the Government w...
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An enterprising Paul Williams from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training sent me a study the Department had commissioned on the economic value of TAFE in NSW. Easily flattered on Club Troppo's behalf - I've not been courted as a media outlet before - I thoug...
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[photopress:Bookshelf.jpg,full,pp_empty] Carmen Lawrence's Fear and Politics Lawrence's central argument is that we need to get rid of the Howard government. We need to get rid of the Howard government because terrible things will happen to our nation if we don't. These terrib...
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I. I enjoyed myself at The Boy from Oz last Friday night. I'd have loved to see one of Peter Allen's big Broadway shows and was curious as to what all the fuss was about The Boy's great success in New York. Mind you, the reason for its success seems pretty obvious. Peter Allen...
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Dear Crikey Subscriber, Father's Day is fast approaching, (September 3rd for all you forgetful children) and Dads across Australia are gearing up for another round of dodgy ties, el cheapo car cleaning kits, and of course, the three-pack of Bonds undies. Instead of going throu...
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This piece started out as a rejoinder to James Farrell's terse comments on a Catallaxy post about Peter Bauer's work on "development economics" and the role of aid in helping (more usually not helping) poor nations. Rafe Champion asks, apropos of nothing in particular, whethe...
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Lebanon has dragged public attention away from the progress of the Coalition of the Willing's Iraq adventure. But the blood continues to flow. Today's lead article in the New York Times reports that official US military statistics on the number of roadside bombs planted in Ira...
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I have no idea how reliable this article is. If people want to be influential (at least with me and I hope I'm not too alone) they should learn to conceal their political biases. Nevertheless I wish I could say that I'm confident that it's all rubbish. Like I said - I have no...
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The biggest story on the Eastern seaboard over the past few days has been about one man. Newcastle Knights half-back Andrew Johns . Even the the PM got involved . Bugger the Middle East or British terrorist plots. It is all about the footy in the end. As it should be. For thos...
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Andrew Landeryou , who I've faithfully promised not to call a "bovver boy", makes the following colourful observation on another Troppo comment thread: It honestly matters very little who they put on the ABC Board, it's the culture of the place that's the problem. It is stacke...
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I've just finished reading David Days very engaging and interesting biography of Curtin. It's an enjoyable, easy, long read. Early on I ran into the ten commandments of socialism. These were taught at socialist Sunday schools just after the turn of the twentieth century. Na¯ve...
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One audience member asked Albrechtsen what she thought of the media. She acknowledged the difficulty in speaking frankly due to her position on the ABC board, but thought the last five to ten years had seen steadily improving media, "such as Fox News."
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The current outbreak of floor-crossing conscience among federal Coalition backbenchers is an interesting phenomenon, not only leading to the demise of Howard's odious Indon-appeasing beefed-up Pacific Solution legislation but also to a graceful backflip on allowing a conscienc...
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A great video , that others have already linked to by Yobbo. If you've not clicked through - do yourself a favour.
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But occasionally we should look at their legislative work, if only to worry about it. Last week's debate on the proposed law to build a refugee-proof, legal wall around Australia highlighted their concerning contributions. One example is the Liberal Senator for the Australian...
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About three decades ago statistics a la USA arrived in rugby league. This had some interesting effects. One year (1976?) there was an epic battle between Ray Higgs (Parra) and Terry Randall (Manly) for a big prize for the leading tackler in the comp. Then someone realised that...
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We girly-men here at Club Faggot are nothing if not broad-shouldered. It's probably all that working out down at the gayboyz gym. So I thought it was only fair to re-publish Jason Soon's evaluation of Troppo: Club Troppo nowadays has such a prissy and precious atmosphere that...
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Well, after Round 23 the final 8 for the 2005 finals is all but decided. With a four point gap between 8 and 9 it will be to much for the Sharks, Panthers and Cowboys too make up. The Tigers, Panthers and Warriors have no hope. My atempt at predicting the 8 a few weeks ago has...
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Well this item seemed to draw some responses last week, so here it is again.
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The Fabians are emulating the CIS (I think) in establishing a essay competition for young people. The details are overleaf and if you win from the competition after finding out about it here we'll throw in an additional prize. A year's subscription to Troppo (if you win the pr...
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Here's Charles Richardson writing for Crikey today. I've been involved in politics one way or another for about 30 years; I don't think I had many illusions about it even when I started, and I certainly shouldn't have any left by now. But I was surprised how touched I was by t...
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Here's the second installment of my article on the GPI. Part One is here . I Last week I argued that, as well intentioned as it might be, the Australia Institute's Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) for Australia was systematically biased towards pessimism about our economic wel...
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This article (subscription required) reports on the US 401K super system getting a makeover. I have little doubt that the Congress has been pouring carefully over the ' Progressive Essay (pdf) I wrote for Craig Emerson advocating the 'backstop society' where we try to set 'def...
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"Mammon calls!" Thus spake me one day in Florence about fourteen years ago to Eva as we spent more and more time snapping up the cool, cheap clothes and other goods, and less and less time in the galleries. We finally got home with 80 Kgs of the stuff to somewhat alarmed airp...
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Helen Caldicott is one of the more notable distorters of truth among Australian "public intellectuals". Like the Australia Institute's Clive Hamilton, though on a global stage, she appears to rank making an ideological point well ahead of accuracy or acknowledgment of inconven...
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Clive Hamilton has an attack on Tim Flannery in The Age here . The criticisms of Flannery are of interest and generally well made. It's also interesting to see Hamilton's attack on green groups that he thinks are going over to the enemy - a theme which was taken up at greater...
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Here's a link to a good article about Wikipedia - it's in Atlantic Monthly which I've never been able to get access to without subscription on line before. Perhaps they're 'getting it' as we like to say smugly in the 'online community' and they're publishing more open articles...
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I was mightily relieved to read this in today's Herald Sun. MADONNA has weighed in on the Middle East crisis ... The accompanying picture seems to show a preference for some sort of peacekeeping force separating the two parties although I'm yet to decide if it is a peacekeepin...
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You'll hardly ever hear the words "Mark" and "Latham" uttered in the same sentence in ALP circles without the utterer mouthing a sneer and shooting a small gob of distaste at the nearest spittoon. It's become de rigour to demonize de-Latham in the ALP. It's just another litt...
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Wayne Bennett hasn't the best of relationships with the press. He has applied the siege mentality approach so successful in State of Origin campaigns to create unity within the Broncos. And while that approach has had some success, with the latest Broncos premiership campaign...
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Troppo has had a pretty sporadic commitment to regular open threads like this. Not sure why - but I thought I'd give this a try. Any thoughts provocative or otherwise would be welcome. I'm going to set a reminder to set up a thread like this each weekend for a month or so and...
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The Age published a piece of mine on the car industry today. It appears in the link just provided, and also - in case the link is broken in future and because it's slightly edited in The Age - in its original form beneath the fold. Some ideas for the car industry In economics...
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I made some snide comments on the GPI on the New Matilda website - which I reproduced here . Anyway, the piece I wrote expanded itself before my eyes into nearly 3,000 words, so I split it - a little uneasily - into two. So here is the first installment published at NM today....
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Courtesy of Troppo commenter Gaby.
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Here's a request for Troppo readers to help me out. First the story - from Crikey today. Highly-respected ABC broadcaster and newspaper columnist Terry Lane calls it an "ignominious end" to a long career in journalism. Writing in last weekend's Sunday Age , he unwittingly reli...
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From the 'living in exciting times' desk courtesy of Slashdot comes the following bit of exciting news. An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com is reporting that four countries have together ordered 4 million low-cost, Linux-based laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OL...
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I've been fairly scathing in the past about some of the more egregious published opinions of Deakin University's blogging legal academic Mirko Bagaric . Here in relation to his advocacy of the legalisation of torture; and here on his proposal to re-introduce the notion of faul...
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Hot on the heels of the OECD saying what a good idea tax reduction for lower income earners is, the NBER has just released a major study of Earned Income Tax Credits, and to use an expression du jure jour it's "all good" or almost all good. So much for all those trade-offs we...
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Nice to see the OECD citing and supporting Lateral Economics' paper on income tax priorities - published as Tax Cuts for Growth by CEDA. The OECD has in the past lined up with the chorus of people calling for cuts to higher marginal taxes on the (unsubstantiated) grounds that...
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