Preselecting Nova Peris as a "Captain's Pick" for Labor senator for the Northern Territory must have seemed like a good idea at the time in early 2013 to then Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The election of Ken Wyatt as a Liberal federal MHR from Western Australia in 2010 had sp...
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As a long-term resident of Darwin, where you can drive from anywhere in the metropolitan area to just about anywhere else in not much more than 25 minutes (even in the peak hour such as it is), it always takes me a couple of days to get used to the traffic snarls of Sydney and...
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Part Two of my essay on the way of looking at the world I've worked out over the last few years and published on Evonomics can be found here . So many years, so few words :( Part one of this essay showed how two dimensions of free riding define what we call “public goods” – th...
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Chris Lloyd's comment on my previous Uber post prompt some further thoughts that I think merit a separate post. Chris said: “If you want to make a living off of Uber, you’re going to have to drive an insane number of hours.” I am surprised that Uber cannot offer cheaper fares...
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A story in this morning's media highlights the vulnerable position of pseudo self-employed "independent" contractors under Australian law: A Perth-based Uber driver is suing the Silicon Valley giant for terminating him without notice, leaving him with $80,000 worth of car loan...
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Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Time Out of Mind (Opening Night) George seeks refuge at Bellevue Hospital, a Manhattan intake center for homeless men, where his friendship with a fellow client helps him try to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter....
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Lateral Economics has had occasion to compile a list of free, freemium and cheap services to help run your one person micro or several person small business. I post it here for your interest and because it may be useful to you. The latest service I discovered to my delight was...
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It looks like we may be getting a six star hotel across the road from our place at Cullen Bay. A proposal by Paspaley the Pearl King has been shortlisted by the Giles government along with two others. Apparently the winner will receive unspecified government largesse to kickst...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM With the ongoing partisan squabbling about tax accompanying the imminent federal election, I thought it might be worth setting out my own “wish list” for an ideal tax system. As readers know, I am not an economist or accountant, and...
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Political parties and institutions in Australia and the US are increasingly dominated by interest groups representing the few, leading to a large policy-induced increase in inequality in recent decades and a long raft of new policies favouring the few by giving them the tax re...
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Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, History, Society, Economics and public policy, regulation, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Political theory, Law, Information, bubble, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Public and Private Goods, Social Policy
"There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." George Orwell Paul Krugman as ever had the right expression. An intellectual crackup. Just in the 1930s when it was becoming obvious that communism, if it was to liberate humanity was certainly goin...
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The Effect of Single-Sex Education on Academic Outcomes and Crime: Fresh Evidence from Low-Performing Schools in Trinidad and Tobago by C. Kirabo Jackson Abstract: In 2010, the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago converted 20 low-performing pilot secondary schools fro...
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Cross posted at The Mandarin In the first part of this essay , I elaborated on evidence-based policymaking and service delivery, pointing to all manner of pathologies that must be dealt with to deliver something effective. The way in which KPIs distort reporting and can perver...
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Here's the first of a two part essay on evidence based policy published today in the Mandarin . This part is a slightly gussied up version of a Troppo post from a month ago . The long-awaited second part will follow. Calling for policy to be more ‘‘evidence-based” rolls off th...
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The Coalition government’s Budget plan for internships for the long-term unemployed was instantly condemned by the trade union movement and the ALP, but given qualified support by at least some social welfare groups. Internships potentially provide a path for the long-term une...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-4FQAov2xI Being a 'young country' as we keep congratulating ourselves, we seem free of some of the greater absurdities of the Old World. Then again there's at least something to be said for them. Having a kind of Monty Python show as your Head...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM From BCG's latest set of instructions : In grappling with organization design, company executives tend to draw on two venerable approaches, which can be characterized as the “hard” approach and the “soft” approach. . . . Both approac...
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Former ABC Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes has predictably been pilloried on social media over the last few days for an article about asylum seeker policy that repeats some themes I have discussed here at Troppo over the years. Holmes picks up especially on suggestions that p...
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Prime Minister Turnbull and Treasurer Morrison are currently refusing to admit the cost to revenue of the Coalition’s ten-year corporate tax cut plan which will reduce company tax for all corporations to 25% by 2025-26. Chris Richardson of Access Economics estimates that the c...
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[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="436"] I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, “You’ve asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?”[/caption] When I was on the Productivity Commissio...
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