Ideas that may or may not matter: Population, the home market effect and manufacturing
This is sort of in the vein of the intermittent series (1, 2), its adopted sibling and an o
Articles from Club Troppo
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Tax games in Europe
As I said a few months ago, tax evasion is the big cliff in terms of the future of the EU project. It was thus fascinating to see the tax evasion games played out at the latest ‘summit’ In Brussels yesterday.
Vale Ford
Well, as Ned Kelly may have said on the scaffold, “I suppose it had to come to this”. Ford has been prosecuting a strategy of risk minimisation which has principally been about investment minimisation in Australia for at least a decade and naturally enough, if you don’t invest you end up uncompetitive. It’s been sad to watch how little dignity our politicians have had in negotiating with Ford. We’ve tossed them money begging them to stay.
The politics of envy or something more worthy?
One of the most successful memes of the right in the last decade or so is that redistribution is the politics of envy. Of course politicians have to appeal to the emotions, and they have to appeal to all denominators including the lowest common ones.
Worth a Look
Jeff Sparrow on ‘the Imbecilic Andrew Bolt’ and Unseen Academicals:
…“My problem is not,” [writes Alecia Simmonds], “that our public sphere harbours ill-educated members (like the imbecilic Andrew Bolt who never made it past first-year uni).”
Thoughts on Gonski and education reform.
With the Gonski reforms expected to be rolled out across Australia in the coming 5 years, it is handy to reflect on what actually are the basic challenges for school reform in Australia. A view of the underlying issues helps one to judge the likely outcomes of the current reforms and others one might think of.
Timothy Devinney on Overpaid Vice-Chancellors
In an excellent recent piece on his own website, Timothy Devinney looks at how the compensation of Australian Vice Chancellors compares to those of the UK and the US. He gave me permission to re-use his calculations.