When funding healthcare, don't forget the caring bit

 It’s Easter, and we’ve got the day off. So let’s think about something different. As a community, we spend a fortune each year on health, mainly through governments. What has economics got to tell us about healthcare? And, since it’s Easter, what light has Christianity got to shed on how we fund healthcare?One man who’s thought deeply on these questions is Dr Stephen Duckett, Australia’s leading health economist, whose...

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In politics and the economy, Christianity is increasingly suspect

A question for Easter Monday: would Australia be better governed if our political leaders were practising Christians? Would the economy work any better?One thing that’s changed since last Easter is that we’re no longer led by a prime minister happy to let his Christian faith be known. By contrast, I wouldn’t know what Anthony Albanese’s religious views are, if any.Another thing that’s changing is the decline of adherence to Christianity...

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Economists need updating on what makes humans tick

At the heart of the weaknesses of economics – its frequently wrong predictions and the bad advice its high priests often give governments – is its primitive understanding – its “model” - of how and why humans behave the way they do.It’s taking economists far too long to realise that to understand how the economy works you’ve got to start by understanding how the people who make up the economy work. The model economists started...

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Now's a good time to work on your rules to live by

The week between Christmas and new year is unique among the 52, a week of no great consequence, a kind of no man’s land between the end of the old year and the start of the new. Not a gap year, but a gap week. A week where all the sensible people are on leave and having fun with the family, while the few who must work while others play hope there won’t actually be much work and no one will mind if they skive off early.But I’ve...

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We won't achieve economic reform until we start co-operating

If you wonder why the push for economic reform has ground to a halt, I’ve discovered the reason. It’s because the foundational assumption of conventional economics – that individuals competing in pursuit of their self-interest make us all better off – is only half the truth. If the mention of economic reform made you think of tax reform, then you’re making my point. Those who want a higher GST because they’d benefit if the proceeds...

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If you’re virtuous, don’t be afraid to signal it to the world

I’m troubled by the fashion of accusing others of “virtue signalling”. This world could use more virtue and less vice. And if people want others to see their virtue, well, there are worse sins. Usually, it’s an accusation hurled at those on the other side of the political fence as a way of impugning their motives. They’re not genuinely virtuous, they just want people to think they are when they’re not. They want to be seen...

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Australians of the Year utterly out of step with the rest of us

How moving it was to watch Malcolm Turnbull presenting the Australian of the Year awards last week. What impressive people they were. Made me proud to be an Aussie. I can't help liking Turnbull. At a show like that he's all we could hope for in a Prime Minister. He looked the part and spoke it well. He was completely at ease, someone we can be proud to have represent us to the world. In his introduction he said all the right...

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The economy rests on Christian foundations

I can't think why, but Easter always reminds me of Christianity. Not, of course, that Christianity has anything to do with the grubby, materialist world of economics. Or does it? Australia is the most unbelieving it has ever been, with the most recent census saying that only 61 per cent people identify themselves as even nominally Christian. Twenty-two per cent say they have no religion and another 9 per cent didn't bother...

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Business - and customers - pay for bad business behaviour

It's remarkable the way the Business Council of Australia constantly lectures us on the "reform" we should be accepting to improve our economic performance (and, purely by chance, their profits), but never seems to lecture its big-business members on their manifest need to "reform" their own standards of behaviour. Among its most profitable members would have to be the four big banks. But the litany of scandals over their bad...

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You were a stranger, so we wouldn't take you in

Do you get the feeling we're becoming a more selfish nation? While other countries were pitching in, we hesitated until this week to send experts to help stem the outbreak of Ebola. Sending people to risk their lives in wars doesn't seem a problem, but to send people for humanitarian reasons is asking too much when their personal safety can't be guaranteed. This comes on top of our decision to slash the planned increase...

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Why we care about morality - apparently

The good thing about holidays is getting time to read books. I' ll look at all the museos, oratorios, cappellas and duomos in Italy provided I can go back to my book when day is done. On this trip one book I read was Moral Tribes, by Joshua Greene, a young professor of psychology at Harvard. One of the hottest areas of psychology these days is moral psychology - the science of moral cognition - which seeks to explain ...

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Greed is the market's forgotten vice

Where do Easter and business intersect? Well, what about at greed. According to Dr Brian Rosner, principal of Ridley Melbourne, an Anglican theological college, greed has been glamorised by the market economy and is a forgotten sin. Maybe it's this that allows those Christians who are business people, economists and politicians to share their colleagues' commitment to unending economic...

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Pollies' bad behaviour & dishonesty worsening all over

We are witnessing history being made. Unfortunately, it s a history-making decline in standards of political behaviour. At least it proves we 're not merely imagining that things were better in the old days. Tempting though it is, one of the things incoming governments don' t do is delve into the affairs of their predecessor. The papers of the old government aren 't made available to the new masters. But all that is out...

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The psychological roots of morality (and politics)

Paul Keating still quotes his early mentor, Jack Lang: "In the race of life, always back self-interest - at least you know it's trying". This may be why, as treasurer, Keating so readily embraced economic rationalism. The economists' working model assumes the self-interest of the individual is the sole force that makes the world turn. Fortunately, the latest research tells us it's not that simple. I can't go on a sight-seeing...

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