Australia’s Addiction to Private Debt
by Philip Soos and Paul D. Egan A perennial and divisive issue in politics and economics today is the matter of public debt. It is commonly asserted that rising public debt threatens the economy and needs to be…
Category Articles
Gaffney on Piketty’s flaws
A frenchman with no commentary on the Physiocrats? Mason Gaffney, author of the groundbreaking The Corruption of Economics and the recent Gaffney Reader, analyses Tomas Piketty’s bestseller ‘Capital’. Capital in Any Century: A Response to Thomas Piketty by Mason Gaffney…
The Housing Supply Chimera
Australia is a mirror of other countries where high housing prices were also blamed on a shortage, always revealed, in hindsight, to be a chimera.
Shortage-sceptic Prosper Australia shocks Senate committee
Prosper Australia shocked the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into Housing affordability with the view we have no supply constraints – because rents haven’t budged. They have been hearing from every vested interest that Supply! Supply!! Supply! is the key…
Economic rents must become part of the public discourse
An economics professor planned to live without acknowledging land.
He would have succeeded but found that he needed food, clothing and somewhere to stand.
Cost-Shifting Stamp Duty – Onto You
If taxpayers are to endure the upset of tax reform, then the change should be to best practice – the tax bases economists have identified as causing the least harm.
Poor, Poor Pitiful Me
Taxi users should be angry at being the victim of a scam obliging them to travel in discomfort so some 'entrepreneur' can enjoy a concessional license fee. And regular license holders ought to share that anger – their rent-seeking activity is being topped and captured by a sub-group, all in the name of mobility for the disabled.
Infrastructure Funding Diversity
Cross posted from The Conversation By Chris Hale Public transport has a problem with money. Campaigners often argue that mass transit is a public good in its own right, and hence should be very cheap or even free. Mainstream media…
Senator Day calls out land bankers
Finally a Senator has said it, on the front page of the Australian Financial Review: Senator Day described sections of the property industry as “carpet-bagging, rent-seeking bootleggers” who used political donations to wield influence to restrict land supply and drive…
The Neoclassical Response to Inequality and Growth
Part II: The Neoclassical Response to the Classical Theories of Inequality and Growth by Polly Cleveland, cross-posted from Dollars & Sense Read Part 1 Mason Gaffney has shown how many individuals helped construct neoclassical economics, often with financial support from…