I grew up in a society where collective will was at the forefront and it is true to say people looked out for each other. The state – at all levels – had various policy structures in place to provide levels of economic protection for the least advantaged members of society. Having grown up in…
Reclaim the State
‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is an old adage, which means that some image can express a very complex message more quickly than a written tract – of the sort that will follow in this blog post. At the Spring 2025 meetings of the IMF in Washington, the IMF boss Kristalina Georgieva was…
Last week, the Education and Employment Legislation Committee of the Australian Senate (our upper house) released its interim report – Quality of governance at Australian higher education providers. It wasn’t pretty reading. Those who work inside the higher education system could have written this report some years ago – given the problems that are finally…
In July 2024, as a knee jerk reaction to pressure being put on it by powerful lobby groups in Australia, the Federal Government created a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. After it was pointed out that this seemed an odd creation, especially given that Australia has relatively strong racial discrimination and laws that protect freedom…
It’s a big data week for me and today’s post is more of a news information offering rather than a deeper analysis of a topic, which is my usual pattern. However, I discuss in some detail recent appointments to the US Health Administration, some of which were prominent during the early COVID years and received…
The Post WW2 period was marked by the mass consumption boom and the rise of the ‘middle class’, which is a sociological designation that is intended to say that the working class had segments that had experienced better conditions and outcomes than the labouring cohorts. The fact that Capital (as a class) deigned to concede…
This week, Australia learned that old geopolitical relationships and so-called ‘free trade’ treaties mean little when it comes to US policy. The obsequious way our political class fawns after the US has been a constant sickening element of our national identity for as long as I can recall. When I was a child, we were…
Last week, I wrote about – The decline of economics education at our universities (February 6, 2025). This decline has coincided and been driven by an attempt by economists to separate the discipline from its roots as part of the political debate, which includes philosophical views about humanity and nature. In her 1962 book –…
One of the striking characteristics of the neoliberal era has been the dramatic decline in trade union membership across the world. The decline has also been associated with depressed wages growth for workers overall, increased income inequality, reduced job security, and the rising domination of the ‘gig’ job phenomena. Related trends include rising household indebtedness…
A while ago, I caught up with an old friend who I was close to during our postgraduate studies. We hadn’t seen each other for some years as a result of pursuing different paths in different parts of the world and it was great to exchange notes. At one stage during the conversation, she said…