Club Troppo

The Age asked me for 200 words on whether the Government should renege on the tax cuts. I said they shouldn't. They also asked Joshua Gans what he thought - though they don't seem to have asked him for a direct opinion on the tax cuts. I wasn't going to bother posting my piece...

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The reaction to Nelson's speech The most interesting and puzzling thing about the Apology Day events was undoubtedly Brendan Nelson's speech . Having agreed to support the motion after a process of uninspiring vacillation, he might have been expected either to say something sh...

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This piece was written for the AFR as a longish op ed. It hung around on account of it being hard to squeeze in as offshore financial systems melted down and as interest rates in Australia melted up. But I'm glad it's out. A month or so having passed between its having been wr...

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Only marginally related to the post, but a great image just the same - from turtblu on Flickr Readers with prodigious memories may recall a post I wrote a couple of years ago about the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the cognitive basis for human morality. Haidt has dev...

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Well, Gideon Haigh may be the embodiment of "self-loathing leftism", but at least he's been known to buckle on the pads - photo by Rae Allen on Flickr ...goes to Gideon Haigh. Last Sunday was the first episode of Outsiders on ABC and of course the first topic of discussion was...

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By abbietabbie on Flickr Yes, folks. It's been a longer wait than we'd intended, but Missing Link is back for 2008. And, just as Peter Cundall always says " That's your bloomin' lot " at the end of every episode of his gardening show, so too I'm not going to resist the temptat...

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Horta in happier times - from reesa lee at Flickr Poor East Timor. Its President Jose Ramos-Horta lies in a serious but stable condition in Royal Darwin Hospital just across the creek from where I'm writing this, having been operated on for 2 1/2 hours last night to remove 3 b...

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There now seems to be majority, if not overwhelming, support for the Apology along the ideological spectrum. But it's clear from comments by several parliamentarians , as well as the resurfacing of an infamous email letter that Hansonism is alive and well. It's no great surpri...

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Oh - D stands for Default (super) . The text of Ross's most recent column is over the fold. Postscript: Alan Jones' executive producer rang and asked if I'd go on his program. It will be at 7.22 am tomorrow morning I understand - for four minutes! Post-Postscrip: Not to mentio...

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In the light of Obama's latest wins , here's Gary Hart arguing for Obama in much the same terms I would . Hart was the 'Obama' candidate against Mondale in 1984 and the Democrats showed their now famous ability to pick a loser. Whether Obama will be much good or not is anyone'...

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I'm beginning to have serious reservations about whether we did the right thing in letting these Love Gods loose on Samantha Brett's unsuspecting lovelorn readers. Poor Shami , tender ego shrivelled and crushed underfoot! But did that stop our Love Gods? Oyster and bacon nibbl...

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Let me count the ways. The way already receiving attention is the narrowness of the base of the action of monetary policy. Lots of households don't get squeezed by monetary policy. A small number with interest income earn more. Lots of families pay more interest but a lot have...

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I delayed looking at this post for a month over the Christmas break because of bandwidth restrictions. But now I can recommend you play these two YouTube videos. Dani Rodrik's immediate point is that formal rule making and enforcement isn't necessarily a step up from informal...

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As Lateral Economics proposed in 2006 if you're looking for taxes to cut to maximise growth, you can't go past cutting company tax rates. Now the research has been updated by this NBER working paper . Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, Andrei Shleifer N...

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Troppo regular Tony Harris published an op ed on Tuesday that set the cat amongst the pigeons. That's for reasons you'll appreciate when you read the piece. It was an interesting business. A software glitch saw the decimal points in Tony's description of the state of the CPI a...

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As members of the coalition opposition struggle with finding the right words in response to Mr. Rudds plan to say sorry, it is pleasing to see that every man and his dog is pitching in and offering their own form of words to help them out of this pickle. To add my support to t...

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Sweeney Tanner, demon budget barber ... Everybody is giving advice to the Rudd Government on how it can best increase its budget surplus. I doubt that really draconian measures are needed as the economy will be slowing down markedly within the next 18 months without any help f...

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Photo by Ohmann Alianne on Flickr Anyone familiar with the findings of political scientists like Philip Converse , about the spectacular combination of profound ignorance and political disinterest of most voters, will be unsurprised by this story on Yahoo! News: LONDON (AFP) -...

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From today's Fin. Tax cuts better off in super As you read this, bevies of bureaucrats are busily building an inflation strategy. Virtually all the medicine theyll prescribe will have a nasty taste. We dont like spending cuts and revenue increases. But one option could pull a...

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