With low unemployment, low inflation and 20 straight years of economic growth, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jessica Irvine is astounded at how so many Australians are carrying on as if they live in a debt-wracked European basket case. Younger Australians have never seen a recession, she says, and many older people seem to have forgotten what one looks like.

So why do people carry on like this? "There can be only one answer", says Irvine, "we are, as a nation, chucking a full-on, all-screaming, all-door-slamming teenage temper tantrum." Voters and business are like petulant teenagers and the government is like a weak-willed parent desperate for affection.

Irvine’s column was the talk of Twitter this morning. "Fantastic piece on what a pack of whingers Australians are", tweeted Bernard Keane while Aleta describes Irvine as "a breath of sensible in a world of stupid". Trent Driver writes: "Best piece I have read in a long time. Wish you could hear the debate by the teenage girls in my ecos classes. :)"

Others were less convinced. "I don’t understand why people like that Jess Irvine thing" said Jason Wilson. "More pundits telling the people they’re spoilt children."

Liam Hogan commented "three things missing from that piece: price of housing, major city rental vacancy rate, homelessness index." Sarah Toohey from Australians for Affordable Housing agreed, "Nice points Liam. Overall econ good, lots quite comfortable, but some have really difficult lives b/c of hsg."

Arriving just after the ACTU conference, Irvine’s column runs into their campaign on insecure work. Jason Wilson asked: "Haven’t we just heard at the ACTU congress that ppl feel chronically insecure?"

According to the ACTU’s Ged Kearney, millions of Australians are in casual jobs, contract jobs and labour hire work. "On top of low wages, and a lack of conditions like sick leave and holiday pay, there is a huge amount of uncertainty about when and how much people will work."

Matt Cowgill and Keiran McCarron took issue with Irvine’s claim that Australia’s welfare state is bloated. Cowgill wrote: "I disagree that our welfare system is ‘bloated’ (unless you include tax expenditures in your definition)" while McCarron tweeted: "I didn’t read your article. But if you’re calling a welfare system smaller than the US’s "bloated" you’re just politicking."

Irvine isn’t the only one arguing that Australians are complaining too much. The Australian newspaper’s George Megalogenis has pledged a "war on whinging". And that’s just where twitter user truckie is filing the piece, under #waronwhinging. Megalogenis says he might pitch a ‘war on whinging’ show to the ABC. Fake Paul Keating tweets: "if you get a show, @Jess_Irvine is in the stop whinging camp, and lot more photogenic than you".

How aged care reform slipped off the media agenda: “Confronted with a major policy initiative that, while affecting millions, offered little potential for partisanship or prurience, the media was a little flummoxed”. Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

The limits of citizen journalism: “Why was new media able to topple governments in Egypt and Tunisia, but sparked new waves of oppression in Syria and Iran?” Alan Knight, Online Journalism.

Could the NYT make money from its scoops? “how much would hedge funds pay to be able to see the NYT’s big investigative stories during the trading day prior to the appearance of the story?” Felix Salmon, Reuters.

How OECD governments generate tax revenues: Stephen Gordon explains with graphs. Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.

That’s not welfare, that’s good policy: Whether we call it welfare or not, the real question is what government spending achieves. Sinclair Davidson, Catallaxy.

Left-Libertarianism and the Ownership of Natural Resources: “our just rights to natural resources entitle each of us to what has come to be called an ‘unconditional basic income’ or, in its non-paternalistic form, an unconditional initial capital grant.” Hillel Steiner, Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

On telling parents to f*** themselves: “I have received many emails from readers which exemplify or reject one or more of the six moral foundations. I recently received the text below, which is the most forceful rejection of the Authority foundation that I have ever read.” Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.

How Containerization Shaped the Modern World: Celebrate the anniversary of the first containership in 1956 by watching this TED Ed video. Joshua Gans, Digitopoly.

In a speech at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the the end of the age of entitlement. He followed up the speech with an interview for the ABC’s Lateline.

At Billablog, Hockey’s speech inspires a song while Patricia at Cafe Whispers pens a poem about Tony Abbott’s Magic Pudding Budget Plan.

Phillip Coorey at the Sydney Morning Herald writes that Hockey’s approach lacks “consistency with much of what the Coalition has said and done more broadly, suggesting there may be an internal struggle going on.”

Hockey told Lateline’s Tony Jones that: “We need to compare ourselves with our Asian neighbours where the entitlements programs of the state are far less than they are in Australia.” Blogger Matt Cowgill did exactly that:

Hockey could eliminate all social spending other than health and old age assistance and we’d still be at 10.1% of GDP, well above Korea, a country he mentions as a benchmark. In other words, even if we scrapped all help for people with disabilities (the support pension as well as in-kind help), got rid of Newstart, stopped spending anything on helping people find work, and eliminated all housing assistance, we’d still be devoting more than our Asian neighbours to social spending. That leaves health care and old age pensions as the only place left to cut to get down to the sort of levels that Hockey identified. The safety net as we know it would be a thing of the past after cuts of that size.

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Twitter’s a great medium for sharing links and short comments. And since that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with Missing Link Friday it raises an obvious question — why not take Missing Link to Twitter?

So I thought I’d give it a go: @donattroppo. Let me know what you think.

Classical liberals and social justice: "many defenders of private economic liberty suffer from a malady that I shall call social justicitis. Social justicitis, as I use that term, refers to a strongly negative, even allergic, reaction to the idea of social or distributive justice." John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness (early draft chapter available online).

Free market fairness – an online symposium: "Bleeding Heart Libertarians will be running a symposium on John Tomasi’s new book, Free Market Fairness, from June 11-15, 2012. Scheduled participants include Elizabeth Anderson, Richard Arneson, Samuel Freeman, Deirdre McCloskey, and Will Wilkinson." Matt Zwolinski, Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Tim Andrews doesn’t want to abolish government: He just wants to shrink it a little. At Menzies House Andrews announces the creation of the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, an organisation dedicated to mobilising Australians against high taxes, wasteful spending and crippling red tape.

"Welcome to the anti-carbon-tax alliance", writes Catallaxy commenter Gavin R Putland. "Right-wing astroturfing good. Left-wing astroturfing bad."

How racist do you have to be to get fired from the National Review Online? After years of offensive commentary NRO’s John Derbyshire finally stepped over the line with a piece on black white relations in Taki’s Magazine. Cutting Derbyshire loose, NRO’s Rich Lowry wrote that the piece was "so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation".

What effect with this public shaming have? Not much according to David Sessions at The American Scene: "those who think Derbyshire-type thoughts, the episode only confirms the alternative-universe narrative that truth-telling white people are always victims of political correctness."

Competitive victimhood: "Nowadays whenever a political group is accused of unjustly harming another group, it will invariably play some kind of victim card" Eric Horowitz, Peer-reviewed by my Neurons.

Political difference inhibits empathy: A new study shows how political difference inhibits empathy. As Will Wilkinson puts it: "It turns out politics not only makes us stupid. It also makes us callous."

Journalists side with their employers: "I’m convinced that so much of the reactionary response to attempts to make journalism more democratically responsive – like Finkelstein – stem from a paranoid, Luddite and protectionist urge among employees of mainstream media companies to keep non-tithed operatives off their front lawn." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

The human penis is a puzzler, no bones about it: Unlike humans, the males in most mammal species have a bone in their penis. At the Conversation Lauren Reid asks why.