Club Troppo

"Australia is working again - moving ahead after decades of falling behind," says John Howard in his speech to the Millennium Forum . At the Sydney Morning Herald, Phillip Coorey thinks he hears echoes of Ronald Reagan's " It's morning again in America " campaign theme. And he...

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As long-term Troppo readers may recall, I don't have a terribly high opinion of the ethics of SMH journalist/"blogger" Jack Marx. But he certainly didn't deserve to be sacked for writing a (deleted) post imagining Heavy Kevy's experiences in a New York strip club. It's a relat...

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On Friday we heard that the Governor of the Reserve Bank stated that he is prepared to raise the interest rate during an election campaign , contrary to received wisdom. This was actually two pieces of news for me, since I'd never heard about the received wisdom in the fist pl...

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According to Glenn Milne , Kevin Rudd's visit to a New York strip club gives lie to "his claims to be a churchgoing family man who counts as his hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer , the Lutheran pastor martyred by Adolf Hitler." But what would Bonhoeffer say? Dietrich Bonhoeffer took ri...

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I always liked Frank Lloyd Wright. I have a theory that lots of ideas somehow get converted into their opposite as they propagate through the community. Thus for instance the theory of the second best in economics was a theory which showed that if you were in a second best sit...

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Well there you go! I read that blog action day - whatever that is - is due for the 15th Oct. Not only is it blog action day, but it's all been arranged that we rap about the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own t...

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After two years of solid blogging, I reckon Im entitled to a bleg (not that this is a promise to wait another two years before my next one.) My problem? Firefox is giving me hell. At the late stages of Firefox 1, I got a bug in which the program took about ten seconds (during...

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Having looked at several Googled images of Glenn Stevens, it's clear to me that the subbies are asking for 'stiff upper lip' pickies of the Governor. I was very pleased to hear Stevens' comments yesterday that, if the circumstances were appropriate he'd raise interest rates in...

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Backroom Girl was nice enough to tell me of a paper being given by one of the world's experts on the tax and welfare systems of the world in Melbourne yesterday. Australian Peter Whiteford was out from his current headquarters at OECD Paris and was giving a talk to the Brother...

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Commenter Link asked me to post on an interview I did on Counterpoint last Monday . In fact the transcript is up on the ABC website so I'm not sure there's a need. But because it's there I'll put up an edited version of it below the fold. Might be a good discussion starter for...

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With any sort of luck, this issue of Missing Link will wend its way out to our subscribers via email, as Jacques slowly rebuilds the Troppo server using the dedicated equipment he's just bought on the site's behalf. Let us know in the comments if you received the email, and ho...

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The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away is 'bad' Peter Saunders' latest book. He argues that the welfare state once supported the poor by taxing the rich. Today it attempts to support the non-poor with their own taxes. He calls this 'tax-welfare churning': Churnin...

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Has the electorate's hip pocket nerve finally gone numb? In today's Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher writes , "we are beneficiaries of the most successful macroeconomic management in the developed world, yet we seem ripe for a government that might want to promise to supp...

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From a back-issue of the ABC Law Report . A patient at UCLA's School of Medicine named John Moore, went in and was diagnosed as having hairy cell leukaemia. His treatment was to have the spleen removed, but before the doctors did that, they did blood tests and found he had a v...

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Teenage Affluenza Add to My Profile | More Videos

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Troppo aficionados will know that a Don Arthur often repays careful reading and linking. His links are full of interest and surprises. Anyway, no surprises that his link to what the great economist James Heckman thinks links to an interview . But what an interview. It reminded...

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Economists spend large amounts of time evaluating existing policies or pushing for some particular new economic policy. Equally important, but less frequently done, is to say what should NOT be done and why it shouldnt be done. Of course these 'warnings' have to relate to a po...

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"Australia's online news commentariat that has found passing endless comment on other people's work preferable to breaking real stories and adding to society's pool of knowledge", says the Australian . I can understand that when you've tracked down sources for interviews or pa...

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The plight of children is one of the most compelling arguments for government activism, say Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray . But in their 1994 book The Bell Curve , they argue that governments should resist the urge to intervene in dysfunctional families and communities...

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