My bias? Poor should rate above the powerful
I have a lot of strong views, and I hope it isn't hard to detect an internal consistency in them, but they're not driven by loyalty to any party.
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Ross Gittins
Ross Gittins is economics editor of the SMH and an economic columnist for The Age. His books include Gittins' Guide to Economics, Gittinomics and The Happy Economist.
Bottom line is there's no magic number
A lot of the problems we cause ourselves arise from the way we've evolved to economise on thinking time by taking mental shortcuts.
Too many stuff-ups about to put economic reform into reverse
Since the reform push has degenerated into little more than business rent-seeking it's neither surprising nor regrettable that voters have called a halt.
Australia has $1 trillion foreign debt. Should we be worried?
Our foreign debt will grow and it already exceeds $1 trillion deficit. But that's not necessarily bad.
Politicians addicted to the appearance of economic success
I realised Australian government was fast approaching peak fake when I read Laura Tingle of the Financial Review's revelation that Malcolm Turnbull's Snowy 2.0 announcement was timed to favourably influence the imminent fortnightly Newspoll result.
Minimum wage rise could benefit all in the rat race
If I was on the minimum wage, however, I wouldn't start spending the increase yet.
Our problem isn't fake news, it's fake government
Smoke signals from Canberra suggest that all the government will manage to get through the Senate is a reduction to 27.5 per cent in the tax rate applying to companies with turnover of less than $10 million a year.
Don't buy the 'money illusion': Here's what's happening to real wages
Economists may not be much chop at forecasting how fast the economy will grow in the next year or two, but that doesn't mean they haven't learnt a few things about how economies work.
Someone has to give if we're to fix the budget
The nation's budget problem still won't be solved when, one day in the distant future, we get the federal budget back into surplus. Only a change in strategy is likely to produce a sustained solution.
How the two-speed economy worm has turned
If you learn nothing else about the economy, remember that it moves not in straight lines but in cycles of good times followed by bad times, and bad times followed by good.
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