Club Troppo

The Government's opponents are routinely accused by its supporters, and even by self-styled sensible centrists, of having a 'visceral hatred' of John Howard. Either that or it's a 'hysterical hatred ', a 'rabid hatred' or a 'deranged hatred'. Because the poets in our midst can...

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Via Gary Sauer-Thompson : The Australian Electoral Study's Trends in Australian Political Opinion [PDF] is a goldmine of graphs, polling and trending all thoughtfully gathered into the one document. Especially for graph junkies . It is also interesting to see where the polling...

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The Patriot, courtesy of Mark at Seeking Asylum Down Under If there was a topic of the week it was the Immigration Minister's decision that Australia will accept fewer African refugees, and the associated furore about Sudanese gangs. Andrew Bartlett reports on a forum of the E...

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A few days ago I got invited to participate in the Melborune Uni Debating Society's annual debate "That the Howard Government has failed the Australian Economy. Andrew Charlton, author of a recent book called (inevitably) Ozonomics pulled out and I'm the consolation. Regulars...

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Microsoft is a remarkable company. When you run the world's biggest internet mail operation, the default option for most high school students, when you're being threatened by companies that make better stuff but don't have your head start, it's not that difficult to respond to...

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This month's edition of Ceteris Paribus the newsletter of the Victorian Economics Society carried the article below by Gerard Brody on regulatory gatekeeping. I don't agree with all of it, but it's general point (highlighting the fact that our regulation review institutions te...

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I can't. Confession 1 : American track star Marion Jones admits using performance-enhancing drugs and will almost certainly be stripped of the five medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She will probably face a maximum of six months in jail for perjury, but that could be...

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In the last two and a half decades, the idea of economic freedom - low levels of government intervention in the economy and wide scope for individual freedom of choice -has been widely embraced by both conservative and social democratic governments. This is because of the wide...

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Hayek has an enlightening concept of the 'extended order' in society. Society begins around a community order which extends only to the hunting group or whatever and families and clans within it. Often those groups, later villages are at war with other groups. As human, econom...

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Reading the Dunera News (of all things) - the Dunera is the prison ship on which my father came to Australia during World War II - I came across some fun quotes. Some I'd heard before but not recently and some I'd never heard - including one from one of my faves - Oscar Wilde....

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The posting rate on this blog is sufficient that the initial post has already disappeared into the blog ether. But the story so far is that I posted a link to an article that Dani Rodrik had praised to the skies. It argued that economists make all manner of short cuts when arg...

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Apropos of my piece a while back on bullshit , since I found the cartoon of the concept in Andrew Charlton's book Ozonomics (I think Ozzinomics sounds better) I thought I'd share it with you - as they say. Since you won't notice that I've also used it to illustrate the piece....

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THERES no doubt that housing affordability has deteriorated substantially over the past decade or so. Indeed as conventionally measured in terms of the income required to service the mortgage needed to purchase a median-priced house in any of Australias major cities purchasing...

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Today's column in the AFR . Exporting Australian Funds Management As the AFR reported late last week, a small new front is opening up in the election at least at the big end of town: Turning Australia into a funds management hub for the region. Its a worthy aspiration. But rea...

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I guess I might have made it to this post by Richard Freeman on WorkChoices as both the blog he wrote it on and another blog that it was reproduced on are on my blog reader (now featuring 477 unread posts!) But thanks to Helen for linking to it in the earlier thread on George...

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Some interesting speculations from Brad Delong.

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The following article appeared in today's AFR. Australian living standards (measured, albeit imperfectly, by real net national disposable income per head) have soared by about 16% or nearly $8000 per person in just the last five years a great leap forward unequalled in any sim...

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Telstra's just made my life easier by forcing me to upgrade my account from wireless broadband I to wireless broadband II. Having locked me into a 2 year contract on the first system, they cancelled it after about a year (their right to do so was all in the contract) and said...

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Crikey asked me to comment on this article itemising some likely initiatives on superannuation by the ALP. So I did. The result is over the fold. Walking and chewing gum Contrary to the opinion of his critics, John Howard has not robbed from the poor to give to the rich. Hes l...

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In case you haven't seen it. And, to remind you of this blog's 'centrist' roots, remember as you're watching, it was Paul Keating who first introduced this style of advertising. Remember Bill Hunter clambering around the wide brown land telling us what a great thing 'Working N...

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