Club Troppo

So far during the current recession, the drop in employment hours has been much greater than the drop in employment. Some have described this as evidence that firms are seeking to hang onto their skilled workforce by reducing work hours rather than laying people off. Julia Gillard, for example, interpreted this as reflecting the fact that many employers, working co-operatively with employees and trade unions, are striking innovative arrangements to keep people attached to work during these difficult days (SMH, Aug 7, 2009). Is this a reasonable interpretation? Are employers moderating the impact of the recession by moving valued workers to part time work instead of laying them off?

I think the answer is ‘no’. First, the experience of part-time work in this recession appears to be similar to the experience in the last recession – though it is too early to be sure. Second, even though part time employment has increased in relative terms during the recession, this has not been because more people are moving from full-time to part-time employment. Rather, there has been a fall in the number of part-timers taking up full-time jobs.

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Friday’s NT Legislative Assembly debate will probably be more peaceful than proceedings in Taiwan’s parliament, but you never know …

This Friday 14 August will witness the NT Legislative Assembly debating a “no confidence” motion in the current Henderson Labor government (see my previous post for the background). Starting at around 10:30 am CST I will be part of a panel broadcasting and commenting live on the debate on ABC Darwin local radio. The panel will be chaired by ABC morning presenter Leon Compton. Apart from yours truly, panel members will include veteran CLP apparatchik Peter Murphy (senior adviser to 5 successive Chief Ministers) and ABC TV Stateline compere Melinda James.

Troppo readers interested in following political history as it’s being made can listen live by going to the ABC Darwin website and then clicking on “launch player” under the heading “streaming now”.  I’ll also be on another panel on Stateline itself on Friday evening.  However at this stage it’s looking like Independent Gerry Wood, whose vote will probably determine whether the government stands or falls, will be one of the last speakers in the debate.  If he maintains his current stance (that he wants to listen to the parliamentary debate before finally making up his mind), then we may not know the outcome until close to midnight.  I’m told that current negotiations between Labor and the CLP have resulted in a tentative agreement that both party leaders will have 40 minutes to speak and everyone else 30 minutes each.  Indications are that every one of the 25 MLAs will speak.  That suggests a debate running almost 13 hours.

Yes, it’s true folks. But there is a catch. You have to be between 18-28. And you have to be ‘progressive’. Me? I cover the field, so I can do progressive, but I can’t do 28 anymore. So I’m out. But you – you may be in. So get those skates on and get over to the Australian Fabians Young Writers Competition, and tell them that you came from Troppo.

HT HomePageDaily.

As Charles Darwin University’s designated “expert” political commentator, I’ve been doing lots of media interviews in the last week or so for both national and local media. As many Troppo readers will have noticed, the Henderson Labor government seems to be in the process of self-destructing just 12 months after it scraped back into government by 74 votes with a majority of just one seat after “Hendo” called an opportunistic election almost 12 months early.

One of the election promises Hendo made and actually kept was to introduce fixed four year terms for the future.  Section 23 of the Electoral Act embodies the new four year fixed term system, while sections 24, 25 and 26 contain provisions governing exceptional situations where an early election may be needed because the government has lost the confidence of Parliament or a supply/budget bill has been rejected.

Hendo wouldn’t have imagined in his wildest nightmare that the exceptional early election provisions would be pressed into action less than a year after enactment.  However, the last few months have seen a prolonged if very entertaining process whereby the two most prominent indigenous Labor politicians, Marion Scrymgour and Alison Anderson, have been at each other’s throats and dragging the Hendo government down with them.  Scrymgour was Deputy Chief Minister shortly before she quit the ALP in high dudgeon a few months ago, partly because she disagreed with its policy of partially defunding smaller Aboriginal outstations (many of which are very expensive holiday camps occupied only a few weeks per year) and concentrating scarce health and education resources in larger, more viable communities, and partly because she suspected that one of Hendo’s spin doctors had leaked to the media a story to the effect that Scrymgour had been tired, emotional and crying in a Caucus meeting.  The result was a minority Labor government, with Scrymgour promising not to support a no confidence motion against the government and to vote for supply.

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At John P. Boerschig Ranches, they ‘do have an organized Black Buck hunting package. This hunt is available at our Brackettville Ranch, which has excellent accommodations with all the comforts of home.’

Is it ethical to hunt feral pigs for fun? James Valentine thinks so.

He dislikes the idea of breeding blackbucks for hunting in a commercial hunting park. Or rather, as he put it, he doesn’t ‘get’ it. He invited hunters to ring in and explain the attraction. But of course no one was game to defend the blackbuck scheme; only a bunch of affable and reasonable sounding blokes pointing out that it’s fine to hunt pigs because they’re pests.

If I was hoping for some thoughtful teasing out of the ethical issues, I was disappointed. Evidently in a great hurry to stay friends with the affable, reasonable sounding blokes, he endorsed their hobby cheerfully, and seemed content that he’d identified the relevant ethical test. It’s moral to hunt pests. In fact he decided, though I suspect he was being facetious at this point, that it was also OK to hunt leopards, because it’s risky (leopards know how to sneak up on hunters from behind). They didn’t discuss hunting for food, though I’m confident that James would have approved of that too.

But it can’t be that simple. (Continued)

Kens touching memorial to David Beeton made me think of the new Bob Dylan album, serendipitously titled, Together Through Life.

Those who know the album well will also know that it makes its way to its climax with the great artist at near full, awesome stretch in I Feel a Change Comin On, before he winds up the whole outing with the great belly laugh Its All Good.

I Feel a Change Comin On, which is a further sequel to the transcendent The Times They Are A-Changing, follows an earthy ditty called Shake Shake Mama, which is little more than a pallet cleanser after Dylans wondrous spiritual tilt This Dream of You. This Dream is the only song on the album written by Dylan alone, and is surely his most moving hymn since his hat tip to William Blake in Every Grain of Sand. It is superior, in my view, to Blowin in The Wind (as perfect a piece of work as that song most assuredly was and is).

To return to the point, This Dream sets the stage, after a quick shake up mama, for the climax that is I Feel a Change Comin On. This extraordinary song is itself resolved in two lines that I, like many others, originally heard as:

Some people they tell me

Ive got the blood of the lamb in my voice.

The line could not be delivered more perfectly, more powerfully, and yet, as Christians will know better than me, does Bob really say that the lord Jesus speaks through him? Whoa Bob! Steady on old chap. That is a line humans dare not cross in their own name. I instinctively shrank at the same time as I thrilled to the sound of the delivery.

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To the right are a couple of graphs of nominal share prices on the American stock market.

What is odd about them?  The fact that there is such a strong nominal anchor for share prices.  Though the price of goods and services tends to keep going up reflecting inflation or down reflecting productivity growth, shares just get ‘split’ into more shares to keep their nominal value stable and their real value falling.

I guess it makes sense that share prices don’t fall to tiny amounts like 0.1 cents or rise to huge amounts, like $10,000, but i’t's pretty weird that there is such stability through time.

Weirder still, there should be no expectation that small companies have low share prices and large companies have higher prices (since the difference in capital value could be taken up as more shares at the same price). But there’s a strong and stable relationship, as you can see from the chart below.  Bug companies have high share prices and smaller ones have smaller ones.

These graphs are behind a paywall here in William C. Weld, Roni Michaely, Richard H. Thaler, and Shlomo Benartzi, ”The Nominal Share Price Puzzle”, Journal of Economic PerspectivesVolume 23, Number 2Spring 2009Pages 121142

For those who’ve read the essay below and have no desire to re-read it, my apologies.  I never posted it at the time out of deference to the original publisher – the AFR.  However with a couple of years having passed, I thought I’d post it here. It is below the fold and I occasionally want to link to it – as I do now. (Continued)