John Quiggin

This may be more suited to Weekend Reflections or Monday Message Board but I am unsure.

If we take the Zombie Economics out of current mainstream economics, do we basically end up with Richard Koo’s positioning on Economics?

At present I think so but I’m open to being persuaded.

Could we have a regular Macroeconomics Sandpit?

Today, I want to take issue with one (of the many) Howard/Costello policies that infuriated me with its rank stupidity.

The creation of the Future Fund led to perverse effects. The normal “destination” of a budget surplus is the net destruction of that amount of fiat currency which is taxed in excess of the next round of outlays (expenditure). Technically, a budget is not in surplus at all if you apply the entire “surplus” to a future fund. For then the monies are spent into the future fund. From the future fund they are invested, usually in shares. Thence the future fund serves to inflate share prices thus having a perverse effect on markets.

It would have been better to have taxed less (balanced the budget) and allowed people to make their own consumption and investment decisions. That would be provided the economy was not already overheated. But if the economy was overheated then damping consumption via a “surplus” but then putting that “surplus” to buy shares (pushing up share prices) must have a distorting effect. Aggregate demand is damped but share prices are held artificially high despite the lowered aggragate demand. How can this distortion be good for economy?

ON ABC Radio Nationals Background Briefing show yesterday Coalition senator Tim Minchin spoke openly about how they repeatedly put winning power ahead of the national interest by saying no to everything Labor proposed -even when it was old Howard government policy .To his credit Tim opposed the universal application of that behavior but was far outnumbered by those who did not.

@sunshine

Did he sing the Pope Song?

Sunshine, I think that would be Nick Minchin – the one without the eyeshadow. I credit Minchin with a major part in entrenching climate science denial and obstructionism in the LNP and in mainstream Australian politics. Anyone as clever and well informed as him who willfully chooses to actively oppose and obstruct efforts to prevent permanent, irreversible harms derserves condemnation. He has spent decades encouraging community distrust of climate science through deliberate fertilising of community ignorance with BS and casual slander of scientist. Whatever good Minchin has done in his years as a Senator is undone and more by his dangerously ill informed and irrational position on climate.

Science and the sincere and honest hard work of scientists have given us an incredible gift of incalculable value – ie advance warning of a serious and damaging danger to our future prosperity and security. Words fail me for describing just how appalling I think Minchin’s actions with respect to the climate problem have been. And I suspect the words I can think of would get me banned.

@Ken Fabian

I totally agree with you. Minchin (Nick not Tim) is a preposterous and egregious charlatan. I thank Alex Downer for those adjectives. They apply so well to his necon side of poilitics.

@Ken Fabian

@Ikonoclast
I’ll second and third your comments! Minchin played hardball on the climate thing, and given his obvious intelligence, that’s inexcusable. As Australia is at risk of some fairly significant increases in future maximum temperatures during this century, we have plenty to be concerned about. The 4C to 6C that Australia could face is more than enough to sink the boot into our agricultural industries. Couple that with the projected changes to rainfall—more flood events in the north, less rainfall in the south and southeast—and the picture isn’t pretty. Australia’s interests are not served by obfuscationists and denialists.

Yes, Minchin is a real book-burner. Unsettling to think one can rise high in the Oz political pantheon while simultaneously polishing your pig-ignorance till it shines. Watching him face-palm Naomi Oreskes on that ABC TV climate change show in April 2012 confirmed that if I’m ever sprung standing over a warm corpse with a smoking gun, Minchin can defend me. What a talent for blithe dismissal of the overwhelmingly obvious. But aren’t the hard Right really the new Stalinists? Les extremes se touchent…

This could be a bit close to home for our Host. I’d like to hear Pr. Quiggin’s unmitigated views but don’t expect it.

Minchin’s remarks about the Climate Authority and Tim Flannery (abc I think) were appalling and, as is becoming the unacceptable but expectable norm, the egregious mistakes and slanders he expressed were simply passed over by the interviewer and allowed to go unchallenged.

I can only presume that anyone prominent who sticks his/her head up and attempts to lead on this issue the way Pr. Flannery has will be attacked this same way; the least ill considered remark will be taken out of context, conflated and inflated, repeated and ridiculed until that’s almost the only thing most people will recall about them. This cannot happen except with the collusion of mainstream media.