Last time I raised this subject Richard Phillipps hopped into me suggesting that I wasn't being helpful. In any event I'm at it again. I've not researched this case in any detail, but it sure looks strange on its face and the report from The Age does not appear to be sensation...
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You can tell this is the good Peter Saunders because he looks like Santa Claus ... Somewhat by accident, (happy accident though it is) Troppo seems to have become a place for really excellent policy discussions about welfare, the labour market, inequality and poverty with cont...
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Sometimes being played for a sucker has positive but unintended consequences. My recent 'free' subscription to Crikey confirmed what I had always suspected. The average quality of their articles isn't crash hot, not when you consider how much they charge for a subscription. Th...
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I was browsing over at Lava Rodeo a few minutes ago, and noticed that Mark Bahnisch was asked about whether he was paid for the articles he writes for Crikey . His answer rather surprised me: The answer would be no and yes. I'm not on a retainer or a contract and can submit ar...
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Iranian President Ahmadinejad If you had imagined that expansionist militaristic "neocon" influence over the Bush administration had been vanquished following the Democrat victory in the US mid-term elections, the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, and the appoin...
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The British Empire League was a bunch of Australians in the early 20thC who wanted imperialism to prevail rather than nationalism in Australia. The prominent politician of the time, Alfred Deakin, was the great compromiser and saw no difference between being Australian and a B...
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Here is the last post on primate sentiments - and as I said at the end of the last post, it's really a postscript. It doesn't further develop the points made in the last two posts, but tidies up some loose ends. Smith himself cooked up a theory of the evolution of language at...
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Andrew Leigh wonders why Labor performs so well in state and territory elections but so poorly in national elections. His favourite theory is one Andrew Norton floated a while ago -- voters think of the nation as a family where Labor is mum and the Coalition is dad . State and...
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Kramnik will take on Deep Fritz starting tonight in a six match game. I expect he's got very little chance - especially the way he played against Topalov. He played better than Topalov and Topalov is a great player, but . . . Topalov didn't play that well against him (except i...
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One of the issues that emerged almost inevitably in the commentary on Friedman's death was the contrast with Keynes. James Farrell commented on the way Friedman deprecated the originality of aspects of Keynes' contribution. But I drew attention to Friedman's expressed admirati...
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Do we really want political leaders with vision? Now that it's leadership speculation season again, every speech or media appearance by a Labor politician is seen as an audition for the leadership. Supporters are looking for someone with big ideas, passion, and a vision for ou...
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While Blair's New Labour remains mired in the war in Iraq, Cameron's new-look Conservative Party declares war on poverty and makes peace with Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee . In a recent article, Tory front bencher Greg Clark , says that : Ignoring the reality of relative po...
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A journalist from the AFR rang me today to ask me to comment on a recent report by the World Bank and PWC which is a comparative study on the payment of tax by companies. It's an interesting report but it's conducted with such heroic simplifications that one sometimes wonders...
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To start of what may (or may not) be a semi-regular post (whatever happened to Dr Troppo?) here is my quote of the week - from rookie Troppodillian DW Griffiths. Jagger seems a disciplined bloke, but he plays dissolute superbly - and it seems to be what the world reacts to mos...
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Ahead of this weekend's announcement of the 2006 Australian Idol , today's Age Green Guide acknowledges the popular culture phenomenon. The paper then labels the show, for about the tenth time, as "karaoke". The Age is not alone; a large part of the Australian pop/rock music i...
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Just to let Troppodillians know, watch out for the maiden post of of D. W. Griffiths, a raging moderate currently working in the public policy business.
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Comparing Australia with the rest of the developed world, we have a distribution of FINAL disposable incomes that is about average. Yet, measured the same way (i.e. using the GINI coefficient), inequality of MARKET incomes in Australia (the distribution of gross incomes before...
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Erwin Fabian was a friend of my father's from the time he came to Australia on the same refugee boat as Dad. He was a few years older than most of the younger ones. They were in their late teens. He was 25. He painted a fantastic portrait of Dad when he was in the camp which h...
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Lindsay Tanner says that Australians are anti-intellectual , but has anyone told the Daily Telegraph's Simon Benson ? Today he's casually quoting 19th century German philosophy : OBVIOUSLY, Peter Debnam hasn't read Nietzsche. If he had, he would know that while madness might b...
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( crossposted at sidelined ) I am almost too disappointed to write this. Frankly, what a waste of a game. I suggested before that the backline selection was illogical, and indeed two people who had never played together in the centres before turned out, against arguably the be...
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Another blogger was arrested in Egypt for being critical of the government ; Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, was detained along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger late at night. ... No reasons have been given for Mr Siyam's detention...
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Winners and winner-groupies were hugging themselves with delight and gay abandonment today, at the unbelievable news, that Australia's most famous news packaging and dissemination service, News Corporation , was first with the news, that News had been extremely successful at t...
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All those jokes about the Thorpedo's sexuality are just so tacky and predictable, n'est-ce pas? For my money the best take on the Thorpie retirement soap opera was from Skeletor over at Spin Starts Here : Apparently Kim Beazley has passed on his commiserations to the Tasmanian...
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Hayek enthusiasts were up in arms when Jeffrey Sachs wrote, "Austrian-born free-market economist Friedrich August von Hayek suggested in the 1940s that high taxation would be a 'road to serfdom,' a threat to freedom itself" ( pdf ). Hayek's supporters were quick to point out t...
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In Alexander's time the amphitheatre was a sign of Macedonian power. Especially for the new and conquered cities in modern-day Turkey. The amphitheatre combined the Macedonian dominance of technologies such as architecture, construction, science, art, culture and wealth. The R...
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According to a story in today's Herald, plagiarism is rife at universities . Harriet Alexander reports that It is difficult to establish a total number of plagiarism cases across all universities because collection methods vary. But a conservative estimate is 3336 cases betwee...
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Here's a review of mine of Fred Argy's excellent and neglected paper for the Australia Institute (pdf). Introduction What could offer more powerful advocacy against some iniquity than to show how it hurts us all not just its victims? This style of argument has been the stock i...
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Crikey alerts us to this story in the Daily Telegraph. BOB Carr has embarrassed his former State Government colleagues by racking up a new record of $438,683 for expenses billed by a retired premier. The huge cost to NSW taxpayers of keeping Mr Carr in his first year of retire...
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The story so far. Robin Dunbar is arguing that language developed amongst apes as something that could replace grooming in facilitating larger social groups than could be supported by grooming. Adam Smith is lurking in the background with the promise made that there are errie...
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Adding to Don's observations below , here's a partial list of Friedman's achievements, with a score out of ten for each. The permanent income hypothesis. This was advanced in A Theory of The Consumption Function (1957). Keynes had argued that household consumption varies with...
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[photopress:Horned_Hayek.jpg,full,alignleft] Kevin Rudd is starting to remind me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . In season three Buffy battled the Mayor of Sunnydale , a polite, quietly spoken politician who formed a pact with demons to ensure his own survival. Rudd also has dem...
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Michael Moore empathises with US conservatives and offers the poor dears a compassionate head tilt .
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Greg Ransom at PrestoPundit has set up a running file of notices , obituaries and tributes to Milton Friedman, including some of his last interviews.
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Disclosure: This is not a paid review Helen Dale (aka skepticlawyer ) has signed Catallaxy up with ReviewMe, a service that makes it easier for businesses to pay bloggers to review their products. Critics call it pimping , Sam Ward at A Yobbo's View calls it an antidote for wr...
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[photopress:kimbo.jpg,full,pp_empty] FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has committed a major blunder , confusing grieving TV host Rove McManus with White House strategist Karl Rove.
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When Milton Friedman visited Australia in 1975 the Institute of Public Affairs declared it "a breath of fresh air." But their enthusiasm had limits. "Friedman is a proponent of the free market doctrine in its purest form" said the IPA Review (vol 29 No 2). And for an organisat...
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Another paper confirms the importance of default options in influencing a range of decisions about retirement planning. I've written on this a few times . When will we get going on this agenda? The abstract of the paper is over the fold. Many workers in the U.S. and around the...
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Economist Milton Friedman died today in San Francisco . Friedman was not just a Nobel Prize winning economist, he was a celebrity. He wrote for Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine and was interviewed by Playboy . In 1980 he and his wife Rose produced a television series f...
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I've just finished reading a book entitled " Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language " (Amazon link - but no pages to view) by Robin Dunbar a 1996 book written in a highly entertaining style for a lay audience. In my ignorance of the field, I found the book highly ente...
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Economists have a proud history of leading social causes of great value. The fight against slavery is my favourite cause of economists with Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill in the forefront. That's where economics got it's nickname of the 'dismal science' (from Thomas Carlyle w...
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Jason Soon has more on the debate over Nordic social democracy and Friedrich Hayek's road to serfdom thesis. It began with an article in the Scientific American where Jeffrey Sachs annoyed Hayek fans by saying: Von Hayek was wrong. In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous...
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Fred Argy has written a letter to the AFR protesting changes to cross-media laws. In it appears, to me at least, the incredible implicit assertion that Fox News is bad for American democracy. Because I think he is an intelligent man and I quite respect his opinion on most subj...
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A while ago I categorised the referendums at the federal level to see what voters were rejecting. It turns out it was centralisation; or the constitutional increase of power to the Commonwealth Government. Of the twenty-seven referendums for increased centralisation only three...
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Public transport is all the rage amongst the left of centre. It has a community feel to it which gives us a warm inner glow in these days which are heirs to the plummeting of social capital. It yields benefits in many forms. It typically generates less pollution than cars and...
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[photopress:nz_news.jpg,full,pp_empty] New Zealand is to get its first 24-hour news channel. News 24 will be launched late next year. Of course, it will be 24-hour news from 1950.
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also featuring: Ireland A v Australia A, Limerick, 15 November 2006 cross-posted for the first time to sidelined . Australia A v Ireland, 15 November 2006 Australia A play the Ireland A tonight, which might not seem like big news but in the greater scheme of things will be a p...
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Needing little encouragement from Justices Kirby and Callinan, the Henny Penny brigade are off and running over today's Work Choices decision by the High Court. Tim Dunlop titles his post "The States are Dead" over at Rupie's place. Meanwhile, the hard core lefties over at Lav...
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Colin Wicking beat me to the punch with a comment on this morning's High Court decision in the WorkChoices Case . My only excuse is that my sort of commentary forces me to read the actual judgments rather than just the headline outcome. Nevertheless, although the judgments are...
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It is a rare for me to agree with Janet Albrechtsen. Still rarer for me to hear her say, almost verbatim, an idea that I have bored my friends with for years. In yesteday's Australian she draws attention to the corrupting influence of political donations and finishes with a rh...
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This storm - on Saturn - really looks like it has an eye.
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Sometime commenter Spog sent me the diagram and the commentary below on the question of churning. He's produced an excellent diagram illustrating the incidence of churning. It seems to work approximately as one would hope, to target assistance where it's most needed - subject...
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One of the fun things about Don Arthur's posts is following the links. I followed a link to Peter Boettke and a few links later came upon this (pdf) fine statement of the early and (for so long) enduring American commitment to modesty in international affairs. I guess isolatio...
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"Hayek was wrong" says Jeffrey Sachs . For decades classical liberals have relied on Friedrich Hayek's 1944 book The Road to Serfdom to warn that tax increases lead to tyranny. But in a recent article for the Scientific American , Sachs argues that high taxing Nordic countries...
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[photopress:Weiners_and_gorge.jpg,full,centered] The prospect of Nancy Pelosi capturing the top spot in Congress and the continued rise of Hilary Clinton has unleashed a masculinity crisis according to Texas blogger Amanda Marcotte : The asswipes are relentless. Fear-mongering...
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Perhaps the most embarrassing part is that they will probably out-scrum us, but that should be it. Our scrum should really use this as valuable training since they can be confident that even if they fall apart the backs will carry this one. For the record I expect we won't con...
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Who is Nancy Pelosi ? I wondered. It was 1987 and a long haired guy was photographing a doctored Pelosi campaign poster in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district . The poster originally said, "Nancy Pelosi, a voice that will be heard." Now it read "Nancy Pelosi, a voice that...
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Why is Christopher Pearson promoting a book by a Derrida scholar and an academic who writes about Indigenous issues ? Well... because it includes an entire chapter on him. Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler's new book, The War on Democracy Conservative Opinion in the Australian Pres...
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Ever dreamed about blogging for living? Earlier this week The Road to Surfdom 's Tim Dunlop made the move to news.com.au. Tim is now firmly established at Blogocracy one of News' growing stable of blogs . The opportunity didn't just fall into his lap. Tim's PhD thesis was on d...
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If there really is a vast right wing conspiracy, perhaps it's a conspiracy against the Republican Party Choice quotes from right leaning American magazines: "Republicans must be punished" Ronald Bailey, Reason Magazine "GOP Must Go" The American Conservative "Republicans have...
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Should I call this thing Weekend reflections? Any suggested alternatives?
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Senator Alan Eggleston has some interesting comments on the Western Australian boom with its economic and foreign policy implications . The Westralians have enjoyed the pressure that a booming China and India have put on commodity prices. Eggleston opens with an anecdote on th...
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"Let's not be misty-eyed about Friedrich Hayek" says Kevin Rudd , "he taught (and modern Liberals believe) that there is no such thing as social justice and that the only dignity to be delivered to human beings is through their emancipation by free markets untrammelled by the...
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America was in the grips of civic excitement last night; televisions, websites, phones - all running hot. A friend of mine who runs a prominent political website spent his day watching the loads on the webservers increase as the east coast Americans left work, and the west coa...
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This chart is quite revealing. Troppo readers either gloating over their high house prices, or groaning in anticipation of trying to ever buy one, are wondering what's driven house prices up. In the last few years an international deregulationist movement based around the webs...
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also featuring: France v New Zealand, 11 November 2006, Lyon Ireland v South Africa, 11 November 2006, Dublin I should be embarrassed to admit this but I am getting up for the second of these matches! Italy v Australia Who really cares how many points we score against Italy, e...
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Theos -- Britain's new public theology think tank " We don't do God " said the PM's spin doctor. When Vanity Fair's David Margolick tried to steer Tony Blair into a conversation about his religious beliefs, his director of strategy and communications, Alastair Campbell, butted...
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Over at Larva Rodeo a few days ago, "Atticus" forensically dissected a typically silly and dishonest Miranda Devine column . Devine bemoaned a recent NSW Court of Appeal decision in which a DPP prosecutor was heavily criticised. Prosecutors shouldn't have to be so dispassionat...
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From today's Crikey. As an admirer of Christian Kerr, I'm disappointed in his lack of responsiveness to a fabulous debate in September that he helped to kick off in Crikey it was then adjourned to Club Troppo. It was blogging at its best with experts dropping in from the burea...
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In a comment earlier this morning, James Farrell made this peripheral point: It's less than twenty years since a South Australian judge had to resign for saying that some wives needed a bit of rough handling, or whatever it was exactly. The judge James had in mind was Justice...
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What a start! For a while one might have been nearly 10 years ago when Australia v Wales was just a question of how many points Australia would score. And then Wales, fortunately for their world cup hopes, came flying back, and what an anticlimatic finish. First though, I woul...
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There are two possible dominant political entities in liberal democracy, the individual and the state. Progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism see the individual as the dominant entity whereas conservatism and nationalism sees the state as the dominant enti...
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This is Imre Nagy speaking, the President of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic. Today at daybreak Soviet troops attacked our capital with the obvious intention of overthrowing the legal Hungarian democratic Government. Our troops are in combat. The Go...
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Suggested reason for a trip to the Old Country. The Bank of England announced the making of a new £20 banknote which will feature Adam Smith (see here , and here is what The Times says). It will come out in the Spring 2007. It is ironic in some way that the Bank of England fea...
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Just one day after the launch of the Victorian State Election, the Bracks Labor Government is facing a crisis with members across the State threatening to ignore the voting directions of the Party bosses by voting below the line on the ballot, and in an even more significant m...
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