Today I had the pleasure of seeing Professor Joseph Stiglitz speak on the topic of From Measuring Production to Measuring Well-Being, courtesy of the Economic Society of Australia. I became a fan of his following his timely defection from the World Bank as outlined in Greg Palast’s The Globalizer Who Came in from the Cold. [...]

photo credit: SvenDowideit Respected Ecological Economists Herman Daly writes in Modernizing Henry George: Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large [...]

Phillipe Legrain First published in The Times as Tax land: it can’t be hidden from the Revenue Filling the gaping hole in the Government’s finances is, in George Osborne’s words, the “great national challenge of our generation”. Unwise spending cuts and tax rises could sap economic growth; unfair ones provoke political unrest; inaction a market [...]

photo credit: iLoveMountains.org With this weeks poll showing that many Australians were undecided on the Super Profits Resource Tax, they are effectively saying ‘please sir, tax me’. ‘No I wouldn’t think of ensuring that the privileged pay their fair share, please I emplore you – tax me!’. With 20 leading economists coming out in favour [...]

The Rudd- Swan government’s flat denial of negative gearing reform proves that modern politics is incapable of dealing with the difficult questions. It was all too risky in an election year. The dreams of working families are set to play second fiddle to the propertied class for years to come. But yet the announced reforms [...]