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Labour productivity and real wages: an update Wayne McMillan Australian workers have experienced a considerable decline in real wages and overall productivity, due to a…
Wind, solar and pumped hydro are all we need, and cheaper Geoff Davies Wind, solar and pumped hydro energy storage can provide all the electrical…
You all know where I stand on the current presidential crisis. For me it’s either Biden or Harris, Nobody else could possibly keep the Democratic coalition together. If it’s the latter Biden should endorse her right away along with every other establishment Democrat and they should all campaign to the convention as if she is the presumptive nominee. (She was presumptively on the ticket that just won the primaries after all and the one that won the election in 2020.) That’s just me. Either stick it out or go with Harris right now as I’ve explained in earlier posts and will explain further in my column tomorrow morning. Anyway, here’s a different view: Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the results of nine out of the 10 most recent presidential elections argued on Saturday that replacing President Joe Biden could cost Democrats the 2024 election.
Following dismal results in the latest News Poll polling the Opposition’s leading advocate of numerology, Sussan Ley, has called upon colleagues to rebrand their toxic energy plan and call it nnuclear ppower. ”Numerology has done wonders for me, so I... Read More ›
I’ve been writing about climate change for so many years now but, in truth, it was always something I read about and took in globally. It was happening out there, often in horrific ways, but not what I felt I was living through myself. (It’s true that, in past winters, Manhattan’s Central Park went 653 days without producing an inch of snow, almost double any previous record, but if you’re not a kid with a sled in the closet, that’s the sort of thing you don’t really feel.) However, that’s begun to change. As it happens, like so many other New Yorkers, I only recently experienced a June heat dome over my city. Here in Manhattan, where I walk many... Read more
Source: The True Catastrophe of Our Times appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Trump’s cover-up was even worse than we thought: It’s too bad that Aileen Cannon has her thumb on the scale for Trump or he might be on trial right now for this obvious treachery: A trip to Mar-a-Lago taken by former President Donald Trump that aides allegedly “kept quiet” just weeks before FBI agents searched the property for classified materials in his possession raised suspicions among special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential additional effort to obstruct the government’s classified documents investigation, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The previously unreported visit, which allegedly took place July 10-12 in the summer of 2022, was raised in several interviews with witnesses, sources familiar with the matter said, as investigators sought to determine whether it was part of Trump’s broader alleged effort to withhold the documents after receiving a subpoena demanding their return.
Political economy is most influential when it links academic analysis with practical participation in processes of social change. Concurrently, the enthusiasm and growing expertise of a younger generation of political economists is crucial. Both features are evident in the latest issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy. Its contents range from the analysis of the federal budget to the political economy of Antonio Negri; and from the Albanese government’s new industry policies to the ongoing controversy over building seawalls to protect coastal real estate. The authors range from political economy newcomers to veterans; while the implicit sub-text is about relevance and regeneration.
The post A New Edition of JAPE: Relevance and Regeneration appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d just share this piece from Vox about the NY Times and Hitler: On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses. Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.” But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism.
Senator Fatima Payman is one of the youngest members of the Albanese Government. Until recently she was unknown to most Australians except in her home state of Western Australia. She first came to attention when she publicly challenged the Prime Minister to be more vocal about genocide in Gaza and this was followed by a Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 30 2024
by Tony Wikrent
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The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
America, 2024. Newsweek: Taylor Swift is now the most influential celebrity in America. Her popularity is staggering, and her position as a cultural colossus is unquestionable. At 34, Swift remains unmarried and childless, a fact that some might argue is irrelevant to her status as a role model. But, I suggest, it’s crucial to consider what kind of example this sets for young girls. A role model, by definition, is someone worthy of imitation. While Swift’s musical talent and business acumen are certainly admirable, even laudable, we must ask if her personal life choices are ones we want our sisters and daughters to emulate. This might sound like pearl-clutching preaching, but it’s a concern rooted in sound reasoning. Here’s that sound reasoning: Swift’s highly publicized romantic life has been a source of prime tabloid fodder for years. She has dated numerous high-profile men—at least a dozen—including the singers Harry Styles and Joe Jonas, the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and, more recently, the American football player Travis Kelce.
If there’s one bright spot in the very dark weekend just passed it’s that we didn’t have to hear much from Donald Trump and his henchmen. He was very unhappy about that and whined on his Truth Social platform that nobody was giving him the credit he deserved: Mostly he’s just been yelling at the clouds while his people have been keeping a low profile. It’s been years since we’ve had such a respite and it almost makes the hell of this Biden debate debacle bearable. Almost. It’s been a very rough few days and from the looks of it it’s not going to let up any time soon. We’re still awaiting the poll results to see if voters have decided to vote for Trump in light of Biden’s miserable debate performance last Thursday. We’ve seen some numbers that show more people think he shouldn’t run for president again than said that last month but the number was always pretty high. (A majority say the same thing about Trump although fewer than say it about Biden.) But we haven’t yet seen the effects of the debate on voter preferences.
Pathetic: The “Biden is a basket case but also Joseph Stalin” line is more unsustainable than ever. But I guess they’re still rolling with it. Also, the transition was anything but smooth. Even aside from the obvious — the coup attempt and insurrection —they wouldn’t hold meetings for the new team to prepare, Trump refused the normal courtesy of meeting the Biden’s at the White house and he churlishly refused to attend the inauguration, It was a shitshow from beginning to end. The relatively muted response from Republicans in the wake of the debate is curious and very unlike them. Dancing on graves is their favorite pastime. Maybe they’re thrown off by the Democrats’ hysterics and don’t yet know how to respond? I suppose it’s possible they’re following the old “when your opponent is destroying himself, let him” but that would be unusual too. Piling on is their second favorite pastime. Weird. We got some Dear Leader tweets from Steven Miller early on but he’s just been doing his standard grotesque immigrant bashing the last day or so. Trump put out this whine yesterday: Poor Trumpie.
. When your belly’s empty and the hunger’s so real And you’re too proud to beg and too dumb to steal You search the city for your only friend No one would you see You ask yourself, who’s watched for me A solitary voice to speak out and set me free I had to say […]
The high court greenlit corruption and kneecapped the government, while Biden blundered on stage, and other news from The Lever this week.
SCOTUS and Chevron The James Fallows tweet Digby cited about SCOTUS overturning the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine was an eye-opener. The SCOTUS decision hands highly technical decisions about regulations to courts. Fallows was so succinct and instructive that I’m reposting him here: A salesperson asked me on Tuesday what I did before retirement. I told him I reviewed the material stresses and reaction forces in high-temperature, high-pressure piping systems, pressure vessels, and rotating equipment for compliance with ASME codes (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) using finite element analysis. Which is why my cocktail party answer more often was, “I design factories.” In a more ironic mood, I’d reply, “Clients pay a lot of money to ignore what I tell them.” Do my job poorly and expensive equipment gets damaged and millions of dollars in production are lost. Do the job badly and people might die. Regulation decisions SCOTUS just put in the hands of judges are often conservative. Especially those regarding safety, like OSHA regulations. They are conservative for a reason, as Fallows points out.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: The Boys, Stranger Things 5, Blu-rays, Mayor of Kingstown, Superman & Lois, Kaiju No. 8, Doctor Who & more!
Sometimes you have to go looking for photos, but this is what greeted me when I got up to make the coffee the other morning.
I’ve got a new piece up at The New Yorker on a new biography of Friedrich Hayek. I got a chance to range widely. From Hayek’s dalliance with the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet— In November, 1977, on a still-sticky evening along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek boarded a flight bound for Chile and settled into his seat in first class. He was headed to the Valparaíso Business School, where he was scheduled to receive an honorary degree. Upon arrival in Santiago, the Nobel laureate was greeted at the airport by the dean of the business school, Carlos Cáceres. They drove toward the Pacific Coast, stopping for a bite to eat in the city of Casablanca, […]
