Monthly Archives: November 2009

Howard’s children

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Mike Steketee was one of several commentators echoing Turnbull’s point that the ETS is basically the policy that the Howard Government took to the 2007 election.

He infers from this that the poor old Liberal Party has been captured by a rump of reactionaries who have taken advantage of the party’s current authority vacuum. By this account, while he might have shared their views, Howard was too pragmatic not to recognise that public opinion favoured restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Given that the majority of the parliamentary Liberals are probably not climate change sceptics, and that a dozen of them might be knocked off in an ETS election, this makes the rage against Turnbull seem more irrational than it is. Furthermore, it lets Howard off the hook too easily. Continue reading →

How the poor are doing better in the US

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Steve Horwitz at The Austrian Economists is running a series of posts to show how the poor in the US have become better off over the last thirty years or so. This table shows how real wages have improved to shorten the time required to pay for some household goods. He notes that this understimates the improvement because it does not take into account the improved quality of the goods. 

Labor time 1973-2009

The situation is much the same in Australia despite the complaints that “neoliberalism” has widened the gap between rich and poor.

Jacques Barzun approaches 102

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I appreciate that this has been posted before and nobody has to read it again, it is just for the benefit of new people and those who like to be reminded of the achievements of this remarkable man. Barzun’s work represents a major and pioneering contribution to cultural studies.

The sheer bulk of his output is prodigious, bearing in mind his teaching and administrative responsibilities. He wrote more than twenty books, edited a similar number and contributed countless chapters to others, plus journal articles, Introductions and Forewords for books by other authors.

Continue reading →

Calling the Double Dissolution Stakes

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It now looks as if Malcolm Turnbull is gone for all money as federal Liberal leader (a shame from my viewpoint).  Meanwhile, Rudd Labor is ramping up the rhetoric hinting at a double dissolution election.  But is that really likely? There are a couple of major factors suggesting otherwise, one legal or constitutional and the other political.

First, it’s by no means certain that the Senate’s failure to pass the ETS legislation next week would provide Rudd with a double dissolution trigger that would survive constitutional challenge.  The law on this area was laid down by the High Court in three decisions during the Whitlam government era (see especially the PMA Case and Cormack v Cope).  The relevant factors are well summarised in an article by Geoffrey de Q Walker at the HR Nicholls Society website:

Continue reading →

Random odd thoughts I: why is the informal economy so small?

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Some things seem to need no explanation, but are not obvious at all on reflection and, if you wonder about them, suggest something of interest about the economic system. Consider the question of why the informal economy is so small, leading to the question of how much more productive the formal economy must be than the informal economy to make sense of how little informal economic activityy there is. See over the fold for the full argument.
Continue reading →

Cheerio, Malcolm

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Machiavelli says that fortune is like a woman (“she favours the bold”). Well it seems that fortune is a bit of a backstabbing so-and-so if your name is Malcolm Turnbull. After smiling on him throughout his entire professional career, she has utterly abandoned him this week.

I mean she’s had it in for Malcolm for months. Supposing there was such a thing as a “Premature Eulogy Index”, measuring blogs and columns like this one, declaring that a political figure was “dead” and dissecting their history. Malcolm’s PEI has been steadily rising and has spiked exponentially this week.

I’m not really sure what to make of it. In the past I’ve basically said he needed a wise old head to temper his boldness. Now I’d add that he needed to adopt a useful differentiating point to distinguish him from Kevin Rudd in the public’s eye. For instance, he might have adopted a carbon tax approach instead of cap & trade. He’d have been clearly different without ceding ground on the overall narrative of taking action.

Or maybe it never mattered. About a year ago Possum of Pollytics fame trotted out a series of graphs to demonstrate that primary votes follow the approval rating of the Prime Minister. No matter how popular or unpopular the Opposition Leader is, he or she lives and dies on the primary vote, and the primary vote follows the PM. Kevin Rudd is just too popular. Case closed.

And speaking of our Dear Leader, he’s spoiled for choice. Does he call a snap election to capitalise on the turmoil11. Just in Case: Pity the poor camera crew who will be standing guard outside the gates of Government House for the rest of the week. [↩]? Or does he wait until his CPRS legislation founders in the Senate and then go for the double dissolution brass ring? I imagine that even now the old warhorses and the young turks are busily thrashing it out.

In any case, Malcolm has done the political class a great service by giving them something novel to talk about.