Last year I published an edited volume called Clickbait Capitalism. The title came as a surprise, even to me. The book was meant to be called Libidinal Economies of Contemporary Capitalism. No one was interested in the volume until I changed the title. This surely tells us something about the publishing industry and how it likes to market the political-economic. A list of recently published books includes the following: Chokepoint Capitalism, Crack-up Capitalism, Cannibal Capitalism. Whatever next? One pundit on Twitter cut to the heart of the matter: “Why not ‘capitalist’ capitalism?” Anyway, I sent an email out to a few publishers: “I have a book manuscript called Clickbait Capitalism. Do you want to see it? Click here!” And just like that, they were interested. It was almost an accident. At the very least an experiment. There was no mention of clickbait whatsoever up until that point. Then suddenly it became the hook for the entire project.
Finance
Political economy seminar
Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt
Speaker: Mareike Beck, University of Warwick
When: Wednesday 17 April, 3-4pm, 2024
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney, and Zoom
Sydney book launch for Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures
Gareth Bryant and Sophie Webber
Where: Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
When: Wednesday 3rd April 2024, 6pm for 6.30 start
RSVP: https://www.gleebooks.com.au/event/gareth-bryant-sophie-webber-climate-finance/
The post Book Launch: Climate Finance appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Neoliberalism changed many things in Australia. Unions are weaker. Inequality is higher. But exactly what changed is often surprising. The state did not shrink. Social spending did not decrease, nor did it become less redistributive. Household wealth has increased rapidly, but largely due to changes in social policy rather than rising productivity.
The relationship between liberalisation and the welfare state is both more central and more complicated than we often imagine. In Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation I sought to move beyond a lament for declining egalitarianism, and to instead learn from the political strategies that have mitigated and even reduced inequality in hard times.
The book examines case studies from three forms of liberalisation – targeting benefits, marketizing services and financialising the life course. Through each I highlight different models of reform that are broadly consistent with liberalisation (means-testing benefits, facilitating private service providers or using asset-debt relations), yet have different political and distributional consequences.
by Jongchul Kim* In a given era, social scientists often share a common philosophical perspective, whether overtly or implicitly, despite studying different subjects. So what if the prevailing perspective among mainstream economists proves problematic, preventing them from providing a comprehensive understanding of the capitalist financial system?In modern Western philosophy, conventional economics is built upon two […]
Political Economy Seminar
The uncertain foundations of sustainable investing and the politics of risk
Speaker: Dr Claire Parfitt, University of Sydney
Date and time: Tuesday 12 September at 12 noon
Location: Social Sciences Building (A02), Room 650, The University of Sydney
The post Seminar: Claire Parfitt, ‘The uncertain foundations of sustainable investing and the politics of risk’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Change is afoot at the Reserve Bank of Australia. This week the Treasurer announced Michele Bullock will take over from Philip Lowe as Governor of the RBA. Lowe had faced mounting political heat after he abandoned forward guidance given as late as November 2021 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 and joined central banks around the world in rapidly hiking interest rates.
One of Bullock’s first tasks will be to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Review into the RBA released in March 2023. Most attention about the Review has focused on its proposed structural changes to the RBA, which would create separate boards for monetary policy decisions and institutional governance. This change will bring the RBA in line with many of its international peers. Last week, outgoing Governor Philip Lowe announced initial steps towards implementing this recommendation.
COVID-19 temporarily re-made fiscal politics. States responded to the health threat by enacting a sudden and far-reaching contraction of the private sector, partly compensated by an unprecedented expansion of the public sector. The moves proved temporary, with a swift return to fiscal and monetary constraint. However, the COVID response potentially provides lessons for understanding broader changes in capitalism.
In part I of our post, we used Schumpeter’s theory of the tax state to trace how changes in the organisation of capitalism had their ‘fiscal reflection’ in changing fiscal accounting practices. In this part II of our discussion of the tax state, based on a journal article recently published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting, we identify a new set of ‘hybrid’ fiscal tools, built prior to, but used during COVID, that could point to a more enduring shift in fiscal politics beyond neoliberalism [...]
