One of the characteristic features of modern western democracies is, as John Ralston Saul has pointed out, that it has focused on the development of narrow forms of expertise and then used reason to apply that narrow expertise to addressing specific social, cultural, economic and political issues. This is particularly true of the proliferating management Continue reading »
Economy
If leading central banks can grow their balance sheets by billions of dollars during the pandemic, they can do the same to fight global warming. Last year was the hottest summer on record and, while this summer is not over yet, it feels like it will break last year’s record. My air-conditioning bill has gone up because Continue reading »
Whether we call it “polycrisis,” like Columbia University Professor Adam Tooze, or “the age of catastrophe,” like the distinguished Marxist Alex Callinicos, there is no doubt that we are living in a period where the very foundations of the contemporary world order are cracking. There is that enigmatic line Gramsci used to describe his era Continue reading »
Prompted by Wanning Sun (P&I June 9, 2024), I have just read Yu Yang’s excellent work Private Revolutions. Wanning observes that according to western media the Chinese population is mostly imagined as a monolith and faceless crowd: divided into those who are victims of a repressive Chinese regime, or heroic individuals who dare to defy Continue reading »
Moves by other countries to impose higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles could benefit Australians shopping for a new car. Australian car buyers could be the beneficiaries of new tariffs the European Union has slapped on imported electric vehicles from China. The taxes of up to 37.6 percent which provisionally come into effect on July Continue reading »
The most pressing problem we face is climate change. It’s even more important than – dare I say it – getting inflation down to 2 per cent by last Friday. But we mustn’t forget that climate change is just the most glaring symptom of the ultimate threat to human existence: our continuing destruction of the Continue reading »
The housing crisis will not be solved for those who are suffering the most by the mish mash of half hearted, small steps, and policy responses currently favoured by governments. They lack the courage to commit to direct government intervention on a sufficient scale in the failed housing market in the form of publicly funded, Continue reading »
The Australia Institute has recently argued for the introduction of a system for measuring the extent of poverty in Australia, pointing out that the government’s recently established wellbeing measurement framework, Measuring What Matters, does not measure the number of Australians living in poverty. Greg Jericho and the other researchers at the Institute have argued that Continue reading »
As legacy media dies we seek its phoenix. With the new financial year comes a welcome slump in begging e-mails for newsletter subs. Not just from the spare room laptoppers but also the towering universities that pay their vice chancellors millions yet want the public to fund an editor. Appeals stress reading is free but Continue reading »
On 1 July, an important change in the industrial relations landscape came into force. Industrial awards (‘modern awards’, as they’re now called), that set minimum standards in workplaces, will include guarantees of rights for workplace union delegates. All new enterprise agreements must also include such provisions. This is a result of the first part of Continue reading »