Club Troppo

Lots of readers of this blog will be regular readers of Tyler Cowen. I'm not, but that's just my taste. He often has interesting things to say and there are just too many such people in the blogosphere so he's not on my feedreader. Anyway, Tyler Cowen is often a good read and...

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I participated in an enjoyable discussion on open government on Late Night Live last night . If one has been thinking about things for a long time and wants to get certain ideas across, it can be pretty challenging doing this effectively - which is to say without misunderstand...

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A great column by the great Paul Krugman - who should have got the Nobel Prize for Journalism. So the Bunning blockade is over. For days, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits. In the end, he gave in, alt...

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OK - I posted the code, but the video didn't embed. In any event, you can watch and read all about it at much greater length Slate :

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Herewith a column of mine for Government News arguing that with Government 2.0 'open government' is making the transition from being essentially an agenda of constitutional hygiene and civil rights (perhaps regarded as an economic luxury) to being a micro-economic reform issue...

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Hi all, I was going to take a breather from the crikey annual group subscription this year, but couldn't help myself. I'm beleaguered with people asking me if I'm doing it again. Because it's not hard to do I'm doing it again. Please email requests to join in with your name an...

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Two years ago I posted a bleg asking for tips on buying an ultralight laptop. I ended up getting an ASUS U2e which has not been particularly good. Anyway, it may have been Vista that was the problem but it's a pretty underpowered machine - with a 1.07 Ghz Intel Core-Duo proces...

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A nice piece on how political coverage gets sucked onto the nihilism of race-calling. HT Brad Delong: George Packer: The Top of Our Game : David Broder had a devastatingly unremarkable assessment of Sarah Palin in the Post the other day. Her speech at the Tea Party convention...

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The New Yorker has just produced this profile of Paul Krugman . In it we read the following passage. It isnt that freshwater types believe that actual people are perfectly rationalthey just believe that making that assumption enables a more rigorous economics than is possible...

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It is surely elementary that the collapse of the financial system in 2008 caused a huge downturn in private debt and that public debt was forced to get into the act to help prop up demand. If one combines the sum of private and public debt, Australia will look high relative to...

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In December 2009, the official ABS Labour Price Index was running at about 3% per annum. This represents a continued trend decline in private sector wage rates (although less so for the public sector). Wage rates refect the subdued labour market. In September 2009, about 26% o...

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Regarding the Australian government's attitude to the war in Afghanistan, Hugh White had this to say on Lateline last night: I think they understand perfectly well that continuing to support the United States there is fairly important for our alliance management, but I don't d...

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One needs a full cost-benefit analysis (including all externalities such as secondary effects n health premiums) to form an intelligent view on whether to sell Medibank Private. In the meantime, it makes no sense to say that reducing the level of government debt quickly is ess...

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The Sydney Morning Herald has been trumpeting a study they supported by on the future of Sydney's public transport and urban structure. Beneath the being overly pleased with themselves, with we're above petty politics harrumphing there is a genuine effort to talk about the pol...

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Well it's not that beautiful, but then lots of bird's tails are not that beautiful. But make a few simple evolutionary rules and somewhere amazing things happen. Like this website on accommodation in Chester that thinks that if it republishes Paul Frijter's post on engineering...

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By Maggie Koerth-Baker . HT: Peter Martin

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I'm occasionally asked by local ABC Morning Show host Leon Compton to be a panellist on a Friday segment titled "3 Big Questions". It involves three local media or superannuated political luminaries musing about political and sometimes more general issues of the day. I was on...

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I always suspected that Tony Abbott was a sheep in wolf's clothing, a bit of a wimp when it came to the crunch. Now it's been confirmed. Abbott reckons that Peter Garrett should be charged with industrial manslaughter over the ceiling insulation debacle. But the truth is far m...

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As I travel the country preaching the great things about Web 2.0 it's great to see a really interesting Web 2.0 app being launched from sunny Melbourne. Well actually I guess it was launched while its creator was living in Sydney but he's just moved down to Melbourne where he...

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