My fear is not that AUKUS SSNs, if they arrive, will be late, ineffective, and obsolete. My fear is that they will arrive and will be effective and even lethal. Because, if that is the case, they will play a part in the drive to a potentially devastating war with China that would be a Continue reading »
Economy
The US and China are at the forefront of new AI-imbued military technology development, and are the world’s undoubted leading military powers. But, while the US struggles to recruit highly educated personnel to its military; in China, out of over one hundred thousand recruits in 2022, 80% are tertiary educated, with more than half holding Continue reading »
Western economies have immovable “stagflation” that classical (include monetarist) policies won’t budge, the increasingly “bearish” market seems incapable of getting growth, investment is in retreat, unemployment is rising and people in rich countries are starving. The Great Depression was just like that, and so is the present western capitalist economy. As the pundit says, those Continue reading »
Australia must carefully monitor US domestic developments as a barometer of longer term risks to the reliability of our “great and powerful friend”, and to avoid being drawn into a US war against China. But the biggest lesson from the political polarisation in the US is that it is better to have lower overall economic Continue reading »
Due to the entrenched English class system, research has shown that the strong familial persistence of social status across generations has not changed in the UK across 400 years of accumulated data. With growing inequality and the emergence of ultra-wealthy and privileged classes in Australia – are we following the same path? Over the past Continue reading »
China is eschewing the former European Central Bank chief’s pledge to ‘do whatever it takes’ to stabilise via monetary easing. For weeks now, global markets have ricocheted between excitement over a Chinese stimulus boom and disappointment that Beijing was taking its sweet time to jolt a slowing economy. It’s now clear that Xi Jinping’s team Continue reading »
If previous defence acquisitions are any guide, the enormous cost of nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy will almost certainly escalate well beyond the estimated but un-itemised initial price of $A368 billion. The record of corruption of the two US submarine builders suggests that the project will also probably suffer from mismanagement. The final Continue reading »
It is time for the Australian citizenry and First Nations to resume their rightful ownership and custodianship of the land’s eco-geology. The present inequity between the country’s wealthiest yet internally feuding family and the nation’s struggling working and homeless poor is obscene. As judged by the Gini coefficient, inequity is increasing in Australia and is Continue reading »
Monetary policy operates with a lag. The pain from increased interest rates is only now starting to really bite. However, the substantial increase in interest rates is reducing demand and thus bringing inflation down. While on the other hand, further interest rate increases add to the risk of a recession. It is time therefore to Continue reading »
Prescription co-payments are imposed by the Federal Government for subsidised drugs. Australians pay $1.6 billion a year in co-payments. Why do we continue to have financial barriers to accessing these drugs? Co-payments are $7.30 or $30 per prescription for Pensioners and Health Care Card Holders, or the remainder respectively. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland abolished Continue reading »