Australians frozen out of the housing market cannot expect that government is going to do anything that effectively closes the gap between current house prices and what most of the unhoused could afford as a deposit. Modern politicians of all stripes are all agreed that their political survival depends on doing the maximum to sustain Continue reading »
Economy
The danger Hong Kong faces is not that it might become ‘just another mainland city’, but that it is already subpar to many of its urban cousins across the border. People always fret about Hong Kong’s eroding competitiveness compared to other leading Asian cities. But the clear and present danger may be its lack of Continue reading »
Without a hint of embarrassment, Australian Treasurer Chalmers declared that ASEAN was ripe for the plucking by Australian business turbocharged by a AUD$2 billion fund. “This is where the action is – in ASEAN – and we want to get a bigger slice of that action” he said. Addressing 100 chief executives from Australia and Continue reading »
We have all no doubt have seen the bad news that China’s exports to the EU have reduced, China’s exports to the US are declining rapidly and, as a result of it, we’re being told by Western media that China is on the verge of collapse. Well, here’s a statement that was released just a Continue reading »
Australia’s superannuation system is based upon defined contributions, largely because that avoids the main weakness of many overseas systems based on defined benefits of rising costs for future generations. The tendency, however, is to focus on the wealth creation from the defined contributions, not on the delivery of secure retirement incomes that is the focus Continue reading »
Economics has achieved much; there are large bodies of often nonobvious theoretical understandings and of careful and sometimes compelling empirical evidence. The profession knows and understands many things. Yet today we are in some disarray. We did not collectively predict the financial crisis and, worse still, we may have contributed to it through an overenthusiastic Continue reading »
Beijing has been slow to address the visa and e-payment woes of foreign travellers, and some officials remain complacent about the exodus of foreign investment. China’s Luckin Coffee, founded in 2017, is the country’s largest coffee chain, with more stores and higher revenue than Starbucks. Its cashless grab-and-go model, where customers order on the app Continue reading »
There is no argument that funding for aged care has to increase or that equitable funding requires that those with higher means pay more. The recommendations of the Aged Care Funding Taskforce fail to provide solutions on both counts, for older people needing care and their carers, providers, taxpayers, or government. The first fail is Continue reading »
After two years of bloody trench warfare and aerial annihilation the economics of the war in the Ukraine are putting the means to end it yet further out of reach. With an avalanche of armaments being poured into the military vortex, the consequences of the unacceptably large losses of life and further massive destruction of Continue reading »
It is not difficult to understand, nor to agree, with the growing numbers of thoughtful people who argue that humanity is on the brink of extinction. And that, without transformational change in the way, we think, and live, our descendants are doomed. The size of our human population, the way we operate the economy, the Continue reading »