These issues are yet again the problem of our age. Their seeming trajectory towards resolution post WWII, with widespread prosperity and a rising middle class, has been undone. What undid them points to the underlying problem: Immediate causes include the spectacular increase in financialization and unearned rents, the lack of and lack of enforcement of progressive taxes, both in turn largely due to a shift in the public's understanding of these issues. What caused this shift in public understanding is the age old problem—power and the lack thereof.
Reading
This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.
After a misstep, it’s about to become illegal to import e-cigarettes without a prescription, which means that, for most Australians, it’ll become all but impossible to vape from October 1.
The misstep tells us a lot about how the Australian government works behind the scenes — most of it good.
Mid last year, Health Minister Greg Hunt announced plans to ban the import of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and refills without a doctor’s prescription. Border force would be checking parcels.
To Hunt, the decision made sense. It was already illegal to buy and sell such products without a prescription in every Australian state and territory, and it was illegal to possess them without a prescription in every state but South Australia.
All Hunt was doing was closing a (very wide) loophole.
Pivot to blockchain
Last week I was pleased to attend a Crypto-commons Gathering with a crowd of people who believe that cryptocurrencies have a role to play in bending the arc of the future towards justice, peace and prosperity.
This was the most blockchain-centric event I've been to, and I was only invited because the economics students who organised it were fans of the late David Graeber and wanted to expose their crypto colleagues to the credit theory of money. This I was able to do, with some success I think.
Bill King takes another look at the 1986 album that Macca has all but disowned due to its lack of success. Paul McCartney was not really in a good place, creatively or careerwise, in late summer 1986, when his “Press … Continue reading
To the Editors: Fintan O’Toole in his review of Louis Menand’s The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War [NYR, July 22] makes some remarks that cannot go unchallenged, well quite a few, but the most offensive to me concern Robert Penn Warren, whom he lumps with Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, and […]
The post A Younger Robert Penn Warren appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
The Journal of Professional Learning, sponsored by the NSW Teachers' Federation, has just published a condensed version of my paper on the nature of teachers' work in schools. It's available (open access) here: https://cpl.asn.au/journal/semester-2-2021/vital-elusive-and-fantastically-complex-teacher-s-worth . Please be my guest!
This sixteen-part series, The Souls of the People, will explore these issues and the ideas and economics behind them. The values, origins, economics and philosophy behind the call to "cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" (Norquist). The creation of think tanks specifically to provide a pseudo-intellectual foundation for inequality, and that along with media convince the middle class to vote against their own interests. The rise, reasons for, and effect of beliefs that markets without law allow for full employment and that wage laws cause unemployment. That competition alone can bring about good working conditions. The rejection of progressive taxes, and of the right to avail ourselves of the power and resources of the country through organizing public goods. And most importantly, how all of these are maintained by laws that impoverish the powerless and enrich the powerful, and thus are self-perpetuating.
With a federal election taking place in Canada in fewer than three weeks, I’ve written a 950-word overview of the Liberal Party’s housing platform. It’s available here: https://nickfalvo.ca/ten-things-to-know-about-the-liberal-partys-housing-platform/
If you’re an ebook sort of a person, you might like to know that Kindle version of my novel ‘Diary of a Somebody’ is available at the bargain basement price of 99p at the moment. And if you’re more of a papery sort of a person – I know I am – paperback (and hardback) […]
Australia’s economy was performing exceptionally well in the lead-up to the Delta variant lockdowns, propped up by a barrage of government spending in the three months to June and impressive household spending.
The June quarter national accounts published on Wednesday show inflation-adjusted production, income and spending (gross domestic product) climbed 0.7% between March and the end of June, ahead of the NSW lockdown that began on June 26.
Were it not for a surge in imports and a weather-related decline in the volume of exports (each of which cuts measured GDP) gross domestic product would have climbed 1.7% in the June quarter.
Over the year to June economic activity grew a record 9.6%, as it climbed back from a record 7% slide in the three months to June in 2020.
Australian quarterly gross domestic product
Failure is only the beginning.
Thirteen of Australia’s 80 closely-regulated MySuper superannuation funds have failed the APRA performance test.
There’s a fair chance you are among the one million people in them.
The results were made public on Tuesday and handed to the funds on Monday. From here on — for the people who run those funds — it’s about to get worse.
APRA is the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. Landmark reforms introduced in response to a devastating Productivity Commission report into the “mess” that is much of Australia’s super industry require APRA to rate each MySuper fund (and from next year most other funds) with a pass or a fail according to how they have managed their members’ money.
I first started using Debian sometime in the mid 90s and started contributing as a developer and package maintainer more than two decades years ago. My first very first scholarly publication, collaborative work led by Martin Michlmayr that I did when I was still an undergrad at Hampshire College, was about quality and the reliance …
To celebrate the writing of Terrance Dicks, a two volume set was released on the anniversary of the author’s death. Featuring a collection of his best known Doctor Who novels, as chosen by fans who voted on their favourite works, this two volume set is a fitting celebration of a writer who inspired so many people over the course of his career, including Neil Gaiman, Mark Gatiss, Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat! Volume one contains The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Abominable Snowmen, The Wheel in Space, The Auton Invasion and The Day of the Daleks. Volume two collects… Continue reading
It has been a relatively low key federal election campaign so far, with a surprising amount of convergence on some key issues by the major parties. As a bit of blip, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau pledged on August 25 that a returning Liberal government would raise the corporate tax rate on the profits on all banks and life insurance companies, [...]
There are welcome changes coming to policy surrounding First Peoples affairs, such as more First Peoples and First Peoples-led organisations … More
This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.
In this month’s edition of Artlink: In Public/Inside is an article I’ve written about ceramic artist Vladimir Tichy, and the large-scale ceramic murals he made in the 1970s and 80s. Regular readers of this blog would know that I keep an eye on the remaining city Tichy murals – on York Street, Foveaux Street, and […]
I'm very pleased to let people know that a translation of my book "Masculinities" into Persian (Farsi) has just been published. Coming soon, to a bookshop near you!
There are also translations of this book into Italian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Slovenian, Hungarian, Korean and French.
Last week I was on leave from work. On Saturday morning I packed a tent and sleeping bag onto my bicycle. By lunchtime it was obvious that our region was going into lockdown. So, I unpacked everything and settled into a week of being a home-body. I long for the …
With a federal election taking place in Canada on September 20, I’ve written an 800-word overview of the Conservatives’ housing platform. It’s available here: https://nickfalvo.ca/ten-things-to-know-about-the-federal-conservatives-housing-platform
The payments system is merely a technical and bookkeeping question, mundane in the end. The idea of operating it with only reserves puts in stark relief a far more important question: What is the point of banks at all?
So much of our lives nowadays are determined by the smooth functioning of technologies of which we know little. Even if the risk of a global breakdown remains remote, we will increasingly find ourselves helpless and panic-stricken in the face of even mild upsets to “normal” life.
With a federal election taking place in Canada on September 20, the NDP has released its platform, which includes important housing-related measures. I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of the housing components of the platform. My overview is available here: https://nickfalvo.ca/ten-things-to-know-about-the-federal-ndps-housing-platform/.