Healthcare, education, cities: Now for something completely different
The Productivity Commission has taken the initiative in proposing an agenda for economic improvement that's quite different to what we've had so far.
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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.
Is our fear of foreigners a result of evolution?
What has caused the rise in populism that's threatening the mainstream political parties around the developed world, including here?
Our bulldust detectors are on the blink
The world has always been full of bulldust, which is why everyone should come equipped with a bulldust detector.
A decade after the global financial crisis, we're still not back to normal
Talk about a slow burn. It's now 10 years since the beginnings of the global financial crisis, the greatest economic collapse any of us will ever see. Things ought to be back to normal by now, but they aren't.
Everyone has a different excuse for the electricity stuff-up
The electricity market is such a mare's nest of stuff-ups and problems it's impossible to see the deeply divided Turnbull government making much progress in fixing it.
Consumers left behind by designers of power system
The soaring price of electricity is testament to the disastrous failure of a major item on the 1990s agenda of micro-economic reform, establishing a national electricity market.
The young are getting a bad deal – here's how
The less academically inclined – of whom there'll always be many – would be better served going on to vocational education and training.
Unis turned into aimless, money-grubbing exploiters
Of the many stuff-ups during the now-finished era of economic reform, one of the worst is the unending backdoor privatisation of Australia's universities.
Happy to be of service to Australia's jobs growth
So much for our ailing economy. Did you see that 264,000 additional jobs have been created in the first eight months of this year, with 88 per cent of them full-time?
Why robots might not take your job after all
You'd have to have been hiding under a rock not to know that 40 per cent of jobs in Australia – about 5 million of them – are likely to be automated in the next 10 to 15 years.
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