Blue Beanie Day in support of web standards is celebrated around the world on November 30. Hey, that’s today. So how can you help? Glad you asked! Take a self-portrait wearing a blue beanie (toque, tuque, cap) and post it to your website and social media channels with the hashtag #BlueBeanieDay. And for that extra […]
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Spotify and an Australian journalist both made more headlines for one of the most influential pop stars on the planet
Continue reading...Like many journalists who’ve honed their careers at the ABC, economics writer Peter Martin began in a small local newsroom and moved through the ranks to become a specialist reporter and a foreign correspondent. Having subsequently worked in commercial media, he has a renewed appreciation of the ABC, both professionally and personally. Here he reflects on his strong lifetime attachment to the ABC, and the lessons he’s learnt about both the skills of the profession and the responsibilities of being a public broadcaster.
The good news is supposed to be that when the government gets out of the way “can-do capitalism” will have us roaring back to where we were before.
That’s the prime minister’s newest slogan, and we had better hope for more.
The unpleasant truth is that before the pandemic Australia’s economy was disturbingly and unusually weak. Can-do capitalism wasn’t doing what it should.
Reserve Bank chief economist Luci Ellis put it this way a few days after Morrison talked about freeing the engines of the economy to do their work.
In the decade or so leading up to the pandemic, there was a nagging sense that these engines of prosperity were running out of steam – investment was low, productivity growth was lagging, and many of the behaviours we associate with business dynamism were on the decline.
Outside of mining, business investment had been shrinking as a share of the economy for more than a decade.
Hard on the heels of the terrible news that the apostrophe is in decline, my wine fridge packed up
Continue reading...Back in early 2017 Re and I made a five year plan. It was vague and mainly concerned with paying off our mortgage. I had not had a mortgage for 15 years and was quite upset with the feeling that I was going rapidly backwards financially.
It seems like the usual holiday sales just get earlier and earlier. Not content with just hammering us with ads, certain megalithic companies named after large rivers or fruits try to foist their "deals" on us as soon as they can. Given the degree to which our lives are mediated by technology, it's no surprise that so many holiday sales focus on "devices," that catch-all name we've given to those computers that run in our pockets, laps, and living rooms. Yet before you cave to pressure, you should make sure that gift isn't putting your friend or family member under unjust control.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he wants to keep prices down.
Without his party in power, “you’re going to see petrol prices go up, you’re going to see electricity prices go up”.
There’s something practical he can do straight away to stop prices from rising.
Apart from a home, a car is the most important purchase most Australians make.
We typically hold on to our cars for six years, and most last many years longer.
This means that when we buy a car we have to have an eye on the future, on what it will make sense to drive half a decade down the track.
In almost every way, certainly when it comes to running and maintenance costs, electric vehicles are the best option.
Mathematical refinement aside, economics is back to where it was a century ago: the study of the allocation of given resources, plus the quantity theory of money. Macroeconomics – the theory of output as a whole, which was invented by John Maynard Keynes – has virtually disappeared, despite the revival of key tools when crises erupt.
Despite appearances – especially in the United States – the era of high inflation isn’t set for a comeback in the view of Australia’s leading economists, and most see no need for the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates next year.
In the US, figures released last week showed the consumer price index surged 6.2% in the year to October, the most since 1990. So-called “core” inflation (which excludes volatile prices) climbed 4.6%, also the most for 30 years.
US underlying inflation
Getting rid of landlines means you can’t call 999 in a power cut unless you have a mobile. That’s not what I call progress
Continue reading...While systematic thinkers close a subject, leaving their followers with “normal” science to fill up the learned journals, fertile ones open their disciplines to critical scrutiny, for which they rarely get credit. Three recent biographies show how this has been the fate of three great economists who were marginalized by their profession.
The government’s decision to target net-zero emissions by 2050 will leave each Australian nearly A$2,000 better off by then compared to no Australian action.
That’s what we were told in a six-point summary of the government’s economic modelling released at a press conference on Thursday October 26, days before the prime minister left for the Glasgow climate talks.
