I confess to a having an old fogey's ambivalence towards mobile phones. There are times when it suits me to keep in touch, but most of the time I don't want a phone taking over my life - or even interrupting it. And I figure I'm old and odd enough to get away with rarely using one.
But of all the amazing things going on in the digital revolution - the spread of computers, the internet, the declining cost of telecommunications...
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Swan tries to legislate for budget honesty
It's too much to hope this year's election campaign will be a "contest of ideas" or even a debate over the pros and cons of the parties' rival policies. But one thing I confidently predict: there'll be endless arguing over the cost of promises and where the money will come from.
For maybe 30 years the people who worry most about maintaining budget discipline - the econocrats in Treasury and Finance - have striven to discourage...
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Economy's 'fast lane' bigger than you think
THE biggest thing that worries many people about the resources boom is that word ''boom''. Booms are cyclical, and thus temporary. So it's not surprising so many people worry about what we'll be left with when the boom's over.
This week, two economists at the Reserve Bank, Vanessa Rayner and James Bishop, published a research paper neatly answering that concern. In short, what we'll be left with is a very much bigger mining...
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
How to cut crime and the cost of crime
Although many types of crime have been declining over the past decade, there's still far too much of it. It's costing us too much, not only in losses to life, limb and property but also in worry that we may become victims.
Then there's the cost of all the insurance we need to take out and the cost of making our homes burglar-proof. Finally, there's the rapidly growing cost to the taxpayer of policing ($9.5 billion a year across...
Monday, February 18, 2013
Mining tax message: no bipartisanship, no reform
WHEN governments stuff up in a democracy we think the solution is obvious: toss 'em out and give the other lot a go. But if you want a democracy that also delivers good government, it ain't that simple.
For too long, the private partisanship of those who want to see good economic policy lead to good economic outcomes has blinded us to an obvious truth: if you look back at the reform we've implemented, you find almost all of...
Saturday, February 16, 2013
The little we know on how poor countries get rich
Despite the contrary impression they like to convey, there's a lot economists don't know. And in various parts of their discipline fads and fashions change without much real progress being made. Take development economics, the study of how countries develop economically, growing their production and consumption of goods and services until they move from being poor to being rich.
In his book, The Quest for Prosperity, Justin...
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
What I've taken 39 years to learn
Keynes was wrong. He famously said that in the long run we are all dead. But since last week I've been an economic journalist for 39 years and I'm still alive to tell the tale. On Wednesday I turn 65, but I'm enjoying the eternal short run too much to want to retire.
I'm hoping to keep hanging around until it's obvious I've worn out my welcome with the readers or with my boss, but I doubt I'd stay long were Fairfax to fall into...
Monday, February 11, 2013
Reserve Bank burst bubble of certainty about future
There's never any shortage of people convinced they could do a much better job of managing the macro-economy than the outfit that does manage it, the Reserve Bank. And sometimes I suspect there's a geographic dimension to their criticism.
Economists and others who live in Canberra seem terribly confident they know better than the Reserve - much more confident than those living in Sydney, the same town as the Reserve. Indeed,...
Saturday, February 9, 2013
How demography is affecting us right now
WORKING out what's happening in the jobs market is trickier than you may think - and has just got trickier. On the face of it, this week's figures from the Bureau of Statistics are simple: they show employment grew by a bit more than 10,000 last month and the rate of unemployment was steady at 5.4 per cent.
But it's not that simple. The rate at which people of working age participated in the labour force (either by holding a...
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
The four industries with most clout in Canberra
Like most, I believe in democracy. But I also believe in capitalism, and though the two have usually been seen in the West as a good fit, of late I'm having doubts.
Every society has to use some system for organising production and consumption, and I know of none better than leaving it largely to private enterprise.
For the most part, markets work well in bringing buyers and sellers together and satisfying their respective...
Monday, February 4, 2013
Why voters seen the economy as in bad shape
Despite last week's excitement, Julia Gillard's early announcement of the election date is unlikely to change much. It's certainly unlikely to change many voters' perceptions on a key election issue: her ability as an economic manager.
It's long been clear from polling that the electorate doesn't regard the government as good at managing the economy.
Why this should be so is a puzzle. As Gillard rightly claimed last week: "As...
Labels:
budgets,
confidence,
debt,
employment,
labour market,
manufacturing,
media,
psychology,
retail
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Gillard talks tough in election year
THIS is shaping up as an unusual election year - and not because Julia Gillard has announced the election's date eight months in advance. With luck it won't be the trip to fantasyland the politicians on both sides usually take us on, in which they pretend to be able to solve all our problems without pain and we suspend disbelief.
Predictably, Gillard's unprecedented step in naming the date in her speech to the National Press...
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