“One of the first things you have to decide on with a musical is why should there be songs.”
The person speaking is Stephen Sondheim, the writer of some of the best songs for musicals in the 20th century, who died in November aged 91.
The most revealing graph presented in Wednesday’s September quarter national accounts is one showing what has happened just beyond the end of the September quarter, in the one we are in now.
Melbourne’s lockdown ended on October 27.
How much cash would you need to be paid to agree to live without a smartphone for a year?
If you are like the typical American, the answer is US$10,000 – which is far, far more than what we are actually charged for having and using smartphones.
How much would you need to be paid to live without a computer?
Like many journalists who’ve honed their careers at the ABC, economics writer Peter Martin began in a small local newsroom and moved through the ranks to become a specialist reporter and a foreign correspondent. Having subsequently worked in commercial media, he has a renewed appreciation of the ABC, both professionally and personally.
The good news is supposed to be that when the government gets out of the way “can-do capitalism” will have us roaring back to where we were before.
That’s the prime minister’s newest slogan, and we had better hope for more.
The unpleasant truth is that before the pandemic Australia’s economy was disturbingly and unusually weak. Can-do capitalism wasn’t doing what it should.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he wants to keep prices down.
Without his party in power, “you’re going to see petrol prices go up, you’re going to see electricity prices go up”.
There’s something practical he can do straight away to stop prices from rising.
Apart from a home, a car is the most important purchase most Australians make.
Despite appearances – especially in the United States – the era of high inflation isn’t set for a comeback in the view of Australia’s leading economists, and most see no need for the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates next year.
In the US, figures released last week showed the consumer price index surged 6.2% in the year to October, the most since 1990. So-called “core” inflation (which excludes volatile prices) climbed 4.6%, also the most for 30 years.
The government’s decision to target net-zero emissions by 2050 will leave each Australian nearly A$2,000 better off by then compared to no Australian action.
That’s what we were told in a six-point summary of the government’s economic modelling released at a press conference on Thursday October 26, days before the prime minister left for the Glasgow climate talks.
At the risk of being political – and politics is important, it will determine how we are governed for the next three years – economic conditions could scarcely be better for a government seeking re-election.
The economic things that matter most to most people are, in my view:
jobs – if employment is climbing rather than falling, most people are not at much risk of losing their job
