Karl Fitzgerald

Who are the real winners and losers under the Howard government’s industrial relations reforms? We think you can work it out for yourselves. Here are some hints: 1. If workers in firms with less than 100 employees have lost their…

The Howard government’s industrial relations agenda is supposedly about job-creation, as if the cost of labour — including wages and salaries, penalty rates and other perks, and the difficulty of reversing bad hiring decisions — were the last remaining barrier…

In every marginal electorate, politicians promise to take revenue raised by nationwide or statewide taxes and spend it on projects that confer purely local economic benefits. This practice is corrupt and unnecessary — corrupt because a minority of taxpayers are…

The Mitcham-Frankston tollway, also known as EastLink, will reduce commuting times in suburbs serviced by the tollway and in suburbs serviced by alternative routes, such as the untolled Springvale and Stud roads, whose congestion levels will be reduced by EastLink.…

In this age of internationally mobile capital, we are repeatedly told that if we want to attract and retain investment, we must make our tax system more “competitive”. Very conveniently for the investors, competitive taxes are taken to mean low…

The flat tax fanatics are back. They say that if there were only one rate of income tax, the system would be simpler, and the rich couldn’t reduce their tax by converting one kind of income into another kind taxed…

In 1978 the voters of California, resentful of increases in property tax assessments caused by rapidly rising land values, enacted Proposition 13, which added Article 13A to the state constitution. This Article limited annual property taxes to 1% of the…

Opinion pollsters have consistently found that voters are more likely to support or tolerate a proposed tax if the revenue is hypothecated (i.e. reserved or “earmarked”) for a purpose of which the voters approve. They catch is: how can the…