Another Message Board
Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin
I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging platform. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack.
John Quiggin 
What is the best way to provide affordable housing in Australia?
The two main political parties have failed to adequately address this issue. Shelter is a basic need
that should be addressed as a social benefit not allowed to accrue social costs. There are two
workable systems of affordable housing already working overseas. The first one is seen working in Singapore. The account below seems to be a good precise:
“In Singapore, nearly 80% of the population resides in housing that is developed and managed by the Housing and Development Board. Units are owned, however, by tenants. The government, following a land-lease system common in other city-states, owns the land and leases it out for 99 years to these unit owners.
Singapore’s policy has less to do with an embrace of socialism (its economic freedom rates are actually among the world’s highest) or even affordability per se than it does with other domestic policy goals.
In fact, Singapore’s land-lease approach is akin to a somewhat obscure model that is popular with urbanists: Georgism. Based on economist Henry George’s idea of a Land Value Tax, Singapore is, by owning land, able to collect economic rents through leasing. It also enables Singapore to make long-term land deals…..
Georgism does not require centralized planning or “big government”, nor does it require state ownership of land, as Henry George explicitly noted in “Progress and Poverty” all the way back in 1879. Conflating Georgism with Socialism/Communism is misleading in the extreme. Georgism only requires that taxes be shifted away from capital improvement values and toward land values.
To conclude, there are aspects of Singapore’s model that would appeal to capitalists—such as the fiscal solvency and mass homeownership; and some that would appeal to socialists—such as government ownership of land and management of buildings. But neither can claim that Singapore’s system has been good at producing affordable housing. Another counter-argument is that while the idea may work in Singapore—in that it presumably produces nice units—that does not mean it would work in Australia. Singapore has a famously competent civil service that also manages to profit from its roads and mass transit.”
Scott Beyer “Singapore’s Housing Model—the Positives and Negatives” September17, 2021
The other workable model is found in Sweden. A precise is given below:
“Public housing in Sweden
More than 3 of 10 million Swedes live in rental housing. Over half live in public housing, that is to say municipally owned rental housing. It provides freedom in everyday life, good service, predictable accommodation expenses and an opportunity to exert an influence on your own housing.
However, there are also challenges. The Million Homes Programme is now facing the need of extensive improvement work. There is an urgent need to invest in energy efficiency improvements. Exclusion exists in many residential areas and needs to be combated. There is a shortage of housing and at the same time it is more difficult than ever to build at a cost that ordinary people can afford. Meanwhile, legislation means that the public housing companies have to combine their social responsibility with a business-like approach.”
Per Spolander
Expert Housing Policy, CEO Staff Office
Sveriges Allmännytta
On first glance the Swedish model seems to be more appropriate to Australia. The Singapore model requires a level of civil service not available in Australia. The Swedish model also seems to have answers for mitigating social costs that are not arrived at by the Singapore model.
A lot more research is needed into other affordable housing models. For example, in Norway there is yet another system in place to address affordable housing social costs. A very short precise is given below:
NORWAY | COOPERATIVE HOUSING
AND HOME OWNERSHIP
NBBL—The Co-operative Housing Federation of Norway
The vision of the Norwegian Cooperative
Housing Movement is to offer its members the
opportunity to acquire a decent home in a sustainable living environment. NBBL believes in
the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others,”
This model has been operating for almost 100years but is now financed by private banks.
The pros and cons need to be carefully researched before any conclusion is achieved
in regards to its social benefits and social costs.
Now I am not suggesting that any current political party even has the will to consider any major
affordable housing scheme. At the most, there are ineffective programs that are not much better than
public relations exercises. The social costs of unaffordable shelter can included racial dislocations and even an increase in crime. Social benefits include a rise in literacy and numeracy as well as a decrease in criminal-poverty cycles.
To ignore the basic right of affordable shelter for all is to demean a large portion of Australia’s population. It can only accelerate the trend to a more unequal distribution of income and wealth.
There is no great mystery. Run State Housing Commissions which build affordable houses for people. Have a nationalized bank which helps people buy those houses. Like we did in the 1950s and 1960s. Get the capitalists and rentiers out of land and housing. Nationalize the land if need be. It worked then. It could work even better now. But it won’t happen. There are too many rich, invested interests in the current system where all the properties and rentier capitalist incomes go to a tiny rich minority.
This is late stage capitalism. The unequal results are built into the axioms and the algorithms of the system. This can’t be changed unless the axioms and algorithms are changed. The current first axiom is unlimited private property for the few. The first corollary-theorem that follows is poverty of the many. It’s axiomatic unless you change the system.
Gregory J. McKenzie I agree that “Shelter is a basic need that should be addressed as a social benefit not allowed to accrue social costs”.
And 3hrs ago ABC posted in support of your Nordic mention: “”According to figures from the OECD, more than 37 per cent of housing in The Netherlands is social housing. In Denmark it’s 22 per cent, in Great Britain around 18 per cent.”
Above from:
“The overall shortfall of social housing is 433,000 properties across the country,” it says.
https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-to-triple-its-social-housing-by-2036-this-is-the-best-way-to-do-it-105960
From :
“With high prices and soaring rents, what are political parties promising to do about housing?
…
“Social housing is run by government or not-for-profit organisations and rents out homes for short and long terms at affordable rates.
“Ms Colvin says that, per head of population, social housing is shrinking.
“In 1994, it was 6 per cent of all housing in Australia. Today it is just 4 per cent.
“Among similar developed nations this is very low, close to that in Japan and the US.
“According to figures from the OECD, more than 37 per cent of housing in The Netherlands is social housing. In Denmark it’s 22 per cent, in Great Britain around 18 per cent.
…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-09/political-parties-election-promises-about-property-rent-markets/101042964
GJMcK, as you also say “The two main political parties have failed to adequately address this issue”, which JQ said in [spoiler date] and [spoiler]! that political fixes are needed yet unattainable because “a shift in the tax burden would be politically suicidal.”
I feel trust in politics is the missing ingredient, which the Nordic countries excel at compared to Australia.
We have been having your admirable conversation and ignoring suggested solutions for 2.5 decades, and to antiquity.
Deja vu & amnesia due to neoliberalism + poor information & coordination via biased media & hip pocket voting.
Does this sound familiar?
When did JQ write;
“The housing bubble
..
“The homebuyers grant was followed in late1999 by a cut in capital gains taxes., which are now taxed at half the rate applicable to ordinary income. Although this measure gutted an important reform introduced by the [spoiler] government, it received the enthusiastic support of the Labor opposition.
“The direct stimulus was applied to a set of conditions exceptionally favorable to the emergence of a speculative boom in housing. As a result of low inflation and generally expansionary monetary policy, nominal interest rates for housing loans had fallen, in the late 1990s to levels not seen since the 1960s. But financial markets in the 1960s were tightly regulated.
“The government responded vigorously and effectively, doubling the grant to first homebuyers that had been introduced to offset the impact of the…”…
AUGUST 5, 2003!
https://johnquiggin.com/2003/08/05/the-housing-bubble/
JQ again – when?
“A bit more on housing…
“A much more plausible candidate for reform is the way residential land and housing services taxed. On standard tax principles, the flow of services from land should be taxed on an annual basis, just like other income. Indeed, land taxes are generally considered the most efficient available to government. On the other hand, transactions taxes like stamp duties are highly inefficient.
“If stamp duties were abolished, along with the current exemption from land tax enjoyed by owner-occupies, the price of houses would not change much, since the present value of their services would remain the same. But the cash costs faced by new home buyers would decline drastically. On the other hand, existing home owners would face a new annual charge.
“The experience of the NSW government, which tried to cap the land tax exemption at $1 million shows that such a shift in the tax burden would be politically suicidal. We may like our leaders to talk about making housing more affordable for young families, but, as a community, we have been unwilling to do anything serious about it.”
JULY 20, 2007!
https://johnquiggin.com/2007/07/20/a-bit-more-on-housing/
When will we prioritise trust in government, and sad to say yet pragmatic, grandfathered capital – so as not to spook the horses – with a long term acceptable plan?
If history is any guide -never.
So toss history out, and have a grand bargin we sign onto ala a climate goal. Equality in 2050. As with science advancing one death at a time, perhaps youth will come to it’s own rescue. I hope.
And let Barry Jones & Ian McCauley speak widely:
“Liberty, Fraternity and – what was the other word?”
“That’s the title of Barry Jones’ Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture 2022. It’s about how equality has dropped off the Australian political agenda this century, and the importance of putting it back on.
“He goes well beyond usual criticisms of neoliberalism. He explores the public ideas that have seen the enlightenment project come under sustained attack:
IMcC also mentiins systems, yay! “without respecting the interconnectedness of systems” McCauley on Barry Jones “goes well beyond usual criticisms of neoliberalism”. As in…
BJ “… a retreat from reason; rejection of facts and expertise; the rise of populism, snarling nationalism, tribalism, and conspiracy theories; a fundamentalist revival and hostility to science; a failure of ethical leadership; deepening corruption of democratic processes; profound neglect of the climate-change imperative; and the triumph of vested interests.”.
http://ianmcauley.com/saturdays/sat220507/week22050705.html
A new plan to get past our politics please. Any ideas? Idea. Kids please study Nordic systems.
And as Ikon says change won’t happen “unless the axioms and algorithms are changed.”.
Elon – Emperor of Mars. And Twitter.
“Did von Braun prophesize Elon Musk colonizing Mars? … “the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and had the title of “Elon.”!
“Dr. von Braun authored a book in 1948 while he was at Ft. Bliss, Texas, called Marsprojekt. The science fiction novel was published in German. Three years after Dr. von Braun relocated to Huntsville, the book was published in English by the University of Illinois Press in 1953 and titled, The Mars Project…
“In 2006, the science fiction novel from Dr. von Braun from 1948, which had gone unpublished, was released by a Canadian publisher of space-related historical science fiction as “Project Mars: A Technical Tale.”
“Chapter 24 of this science fiction work is titled, “How Mars in Governed.” In one passage of that chapter, the book states: The Martian government was directed by 10 men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and had the title of “Elon.” Two houses of parliament enacted the laws to be administered by Elon and his cabinet. The upper house was called the Council of the Elders and contained 60 people who were named to those positions for life by Elon.”
https://yellowhammernews.com/did-von-braun-prophesize-elon-musk-colonizing-mars/
*
The Mars Project “is astonishing is that von Braun’s scenario is still valid today.” Mark Wade
“The Mars Project is a technical specification for a human expedition to Mars. … the first “technically comprehensive design” for such an expedition.[1] The book has been described as “the most influential book on planning human missions to Mars”.
wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mars_Project
*
JQ agrees;
“I’m not happy about Musk taking over Twitter…”
https://crookedtimber.org/2022/05/01/alternative-social-media-open-thread/#comment-817391
Nor I, as “Musk is tweeting like he owns the place … which, actually, he likely soon will”…
“It feels risky to tell you about Elon Musk’s latest tweets because you never know what he is going to share next.”
https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2022/musk-is-tweeting-like-he-owns-the-place-which-actually-he-likely-soon-will/
Housing & Mars minor compared to these 4 articles (+ Substack & Stripe aka Elon & Theil^5^6.). It these articles don’t scare you, you’re dead, a zombie, ignorant by affect, or a conservative of power for yourself, trashing convention with dreams of being ruler of Mars.
Isn’t this collusion? Elon Musk & Peter Theil who invested in Stripe, are absorbing and promoting cryoto & transactions including “Twitter announced that it will partner with Stripe Inc (digital payments processor) for piloting cryptocurrency payouts.^5,^6.
Rogue Rupert, Lachlan & Lackey’s media musings have and are “abandoning any attempt at fulfilling one of the media’s primary obligations to a democratic society — the provision of truthful news coverage — and instead becoming a truth-distorting propagandist for one side”^1 …””So why not freeze Rupert Murdoch’s assets, as Fox News deals in Kremlin propaganda.”^2.
Yet propaganda protectionists, due to monopoly on news and information, are so scared of “Big Tech’s centralized censorship power” they are trying to give over public & State’s roles, asserting “Big Tech’s centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves” … by “Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security”^3.
And our ATO bending backwards for “Big Tech’s centralized censorship power” to further protected the, and blind the public; “Journalists carrying out public interest journalism face the prospect of being effectively licensed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in order to access company data, which is essential for corporate investigations”^4.
*
^1.
“As News Corp goes ‘rogue’ on election coverage, what price will Australian democracy pay?
“Going rogue” here means abandoning any attempt at fulfilling one of the media’s primary obligations to a democratic society — the provision of truthful news coverage — and instead becoming a truth-distorting propagandist for one side.
“The evidence that News Corp has gone rogue during the current federal election is plentiful. It can be seen every morning in its newspapers across the country, and every evening on Sky News after dark.
“In the end, democracies are thrown back on conventions, which provide the boundaries within which politics operates in ways conducive to the public good.
“The conventions depend on people in power, including those running media organisations, living up to the responsibilities that their role in a democracy imposes on them.
“By convention, those responsibilities include prioritising the public interest over the private interests of media organisations and their owners, and providing news content calculated to inform, not repel, the voting public.
“News Corporation fails on both counts.
“It prioritises the understood financial and ideological interests of one man, Rupert Murdoch, over the public interest, and its toxic news content is calculated to reinforce the worldview of its target audiences.
“If News Corp were merely an online echo chamber, this would be bad enough, but it is not.
“The ready availability of its newspapers to the population as a whole, and the spread of its Sky after dark content beyond the confines of pay television into regional free-to-air services, make it a far more damaging influence than any online filter bubble.
“In an age where communications businesses are enjoined to “move fast and break things”, breaking these conventions risks breaking democracy itself. Events in the United States since 2016 provide a stark example of what this looks like when it happens.
https://theconversation.com/as-news-corp-goes-rogue-on-election-coverage-what-price-will-australian-democracy-pay-181599
*
^2.
“Fox News deals in Kremlin propaganda. So why not freeze Rupert Murdoch’s assets?
“If NewsCorp’s owner were Russian, there would be no hesitation in applying sanctions
“If the west could find the courage, it would order an immediate freeze of Rupert Murdoch’s assets. His Fox News presenters and Russia’s propagandists are so intermeshed that separating the two is as impossible as unbaking a cake.”…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/07/fox-new-deals-in-kremlin-propaganda-freeze-rupert-murdochs-assets
*
^3.
“Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security
“When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech’s centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/former-intelligence-officials-citing
*
^4.
And Australia leads the western world in punitive secrecy & control policies;
“Tax office move to ‘license’ journalists risks extending government control over corporate information
“The proposal, which would introduce a tiered system of access to corporate data, has put the ATO in conflict with the MEAA, the journalists union.”
“Journalists carrying out public interest journalism face the prospect of being effectively licensed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in order to access company data, which is essential for corporate investigations, . ..”
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/05/06/ato-move-to-licence-journalists-risks-extending-government-control/
*
^5.
Scary. Not a word against news corpse during camoaign by politicians as the are scared of Rogue Rupert, Lachlan & Lackey’s, and Big Tech’s centralized censorship power. And in case you hadn’t notice all the above also have veto power. Including substack owned by an ozymandis, with monies flowing through Thiel & Musk.
Antivax $’s on Substack via payment gateway “Stripe, Inc. an Irish-American financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in San Francisco, United States and Dublin, Ireland”:
“moved to Substack. In January 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate criticized the company for allowing content which could be dangerous to public health, estimating it earned $2.5 million per year from the top five anti-vax authors alone, who have tens of thousands of subscribers”.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack
From Substack Content Guidelines:
“Substack’s payments are processed through Stripe, which excludes certain types of businesses from using their service. Please refer to the Stripe Service Agreement (see the US agreement here) and Stripe’s restricted businesses for more information about restricted business categories and practices.
…
“We don’t allow content that promotes harmful or illegal activities
…
“We are vehemently anti-spam and anti-phishing.
…
Comments
…
“The philosophy behind these guidelines also applies to Substack readers. We believe that writers are responsible for moderating and managing their communities, but there are some occasions when we will review reports of readers’ comments to enforce these guidelines.
…
substack
com/content
*
^6.
Stripe, Inc. … “received investment of $2 million including from PayPal co-founders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel”
…
“Stripe partnered with Spotify to help creators monetize subscriptions, accept payments and launch recurring revenue streams.[11] In April 2022, Twitter announced that it will partner with Stripe Inc (digital payments processor) for piloting cryptocurrency payouts for limited users in the platform. “The crypto payments will be routed through Stripe Connect, which will also handle KYC requirements”, Stripe said. The company announced it is also planning to add options for payment in other cryptocurrencies in the future.
“In April 2022, Stripe announced its strategic partnership with Uk-based FinTech company ION.”
wikipedia org
/wiki/ Stripe_(company)
Any takers for The Hybrid Forecasting-Persuasion Tournament.
“Phil Tetlock’s research team is running a tournament that will team up superforecasters with subject-matter experts to produce accurate forecasts and informative rationales on existential risk topics. If you would like to express interest in participating, please answer some initial questions about your views on X-risk in this form by May 13th.
“The Hybrid Forecasting-Persuasion Tournament will explore potential threats to humanity in the next century, with a focus on
– artificial intelligence,
– biosecurity, climate, and
– nuclear war in the short-term ( Have studied existential risk topics, formally or informally.
> Can devote at least 3 hours per week to forecasting for 12-16 weeks beginning in May.
“We will provide more detail on compensation for participation after selection process but it will range from $2,000 up to $10,000, depending on your level of engagement and accuracy.
…
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15NLDoILtL_jK0X1nLDkWoqAnfAdxOfBvRKxSNU4EpjU/mobilebasic
The weak version of Linguistic Relativity leads to and is weaponised by… Rupertspeak.
Imo, repetitive viewing or hearing and use of memes & language, affects viewers nuance of choice under uncertainty analogous to “…proper exploitation of the properties of alternative primal and dual representations of preferences allows analysts [news media] to generalize and extend the results of the existing literature [towards own aims] on preferences under uncertainty [affecting humans sub cognitively their chosen social & political choices]”. (Chambers & Quiggin 2001)
*
Linguistic Relativity
…
“In the Samuel R. Delany science fiction novel, “Babel-17,” the author describes a highly advanced, information-dense language that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought.
“The totalitarian regime depicted in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four in effect acts on the basis of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, seeking to replace English with Newspeak, a language constructed specifically with the intention that thoughts subversive of the regime cannot be expressed in it, and therefore people educated to speak and think in it would not have such thoughts.
“Social media
Linguistic relativity plays a role in social media across different cultures. Social media is a widespread platform across the entire world allowing different cultures to connect. However, because social media is not always face to face, who lose that interaction and understanding of what people from different cultures might be trying to say.
“Sociolinguistics is the study of how language is shaped within a cultural context, or how people from different cultures use language.
“Sociolinguistics also plays a role in variables within language, like the way words are pronounced, word selection in certain dialogue, context, and tone. These can all be lost in the platform of social media.
…
wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
*
Chambers & Quiggin 2001
…”Moreover, proper exploitation of the properties of alternative primal and dual representations of preferences allows analysts to generalize and extend the results of the existing literature on preferences under uncertainty, thus making expected-utility theory largely superfluous for many decisions. These insights open the way for developments in the basic theory of production under uncertainty, the theory of hedging behavior, the analysis of agency problems and the theory of production insurance.”
Uncertainty, Production, Choice, and Agency
The State-Contingent Approach
AUTHORS:Robert G. Chambers, University of Maryland, College Park
John Quiggin, Australian National University, Canberra
DATE PUBLISHED: March 2001
https://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/economics/economics-general-interest/uncertainty-production-choice-and-agency-state-contingent-approach
Now, if I just had a clear year to work this out! Any references anyone?
Great explainer.
“Why Infra-Bayesianism?
“Uncertain updates
“Imagine it’s late in the night, the lights are off, and you are trying to find your smartphone. You cannot turn on the lights, and you are having a bit of trouble seeing properly[2]. You have a vague sense about where your smartphone should be (your prior, panel a). Then you see a red blinking light from your smartphone (sensory evidence, panel b). Since your brain is really good at this type of thing, you integrate the sensory evidence with your prior optimally (despite your disinhibited state) to obtain an improved sense of where your smartphone might be (posterior, panel c).
[Graphic.
Equation]
…
https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/9uj2Mto9CNdWZudyq/elementary-infra-bayesianism
Australian electoral system gets 15 out of 20. 75% needs to trigger electoral reform.
“Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”. Wikipedia
So the answer to the headline question is NO, our electoral system is NOT truely democratic.
How does “75% democracy” or
“Our electoral system is three quarters democratic” instead of; The Conversation / Stephen Morey framing;
“Is our electoral system truly democratic?
… and finishing article with “Australia has a good electoral system, … But there are aspects that could be improved.”. By 25%.
*
“Is our electoral system truly democratic? How Australia stacks up on 4 key measures
…
“Proportional systems also reduce the number of “wasted votes”. In our preferential system, most MPs in the House of Representatives win with between 50.1% and 60% of the votes after preferences. That means between 49.9% and 40% are voting for defeated candidates. These votes are “wasted” in the sense that they don’t lead to the election of a candidate. But in the Senate, which uses proportional voting, at least 85% of votes count to the elected candidates.
“Since the House of Representatives is the main game, and there are too many people whose votes don’t elect anyone in that house, I can only give 3 stars for us on this.
“Australia has a good electoral system, and the rules of the election are conducted very fairly by the independent Australian Electoral Commission. But there are aspects that could be improved. So let’s give ourselves a mark of 15/20 and work to make it even better.
http://theconversation.com/is-our-electoral-system-truly-democratic-how-australia-stacks-up-on-4-key-measures-180868
“having insurance reduces feelings of anxiety and thus reduces the frequency of these negative thoughts.”(^1). Works for me.
Vaccines also seem to provide me with “THE MAGICAL AURA OF INSURANCE”. A negative though, as my priors are updated and “insured participants end up providing lower estimates of the likelihood of a mishap.” Uninteded consequence, shifted baseline, or via JQ “moral hazard and adverse selection”?(^3.)
And golfers get “The strange business of hole-in-one insurance”.(^2)
*
^1.
“THE MAGICAL AURA OF INSURANCE
…
“The Talisman Effect Of Insurance
…
“Anxiety And Cognitive Availability
Our research suggests that having insurance reduces feelings of anxiety and thus reduces the frequency of these negative thoughts. Since estimating the likelihood of an event is affected by the ease of recalling thoughts about the event, insured participants end up providing lower estimates of the likelihood of a mishap.”
…
For Further Reading
Schindler, R. M., Isaac, M. S., Dolansky, E., & Adams, G. C. (2022).
Anxiety, cognitive availability, and the talisman effect of insurance.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221077791
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973).
Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability.
Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207–232.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9
Tykocinski, O. E. (2008). Insurance, risk and magical thinking.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1346–1356.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208320556
https://spsp.org/news-center/blog/isaac-schindler-insurance
*
^3.
Further JQ reading:
“Crop insurance and crop production: an empirical study of moral hazard and adverse selection”
JC Quiggin, G Karagiannis, J Stanton
Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 37 (429-2016-29192), 95-113, 1993
“Regret theory with general choice sets”
John Quiggin
1994/3
Cited by 255
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=5-etgjQAAAAJ&citation_for_view=5-etgjQAAAAJ:ULOm3_A8WrAC
*
^2.
“The strange business of hole-in-one insurance
…
The chances of this happening for an amateur golfer are minuscule (~1 in 12.5k). But most organizers can’t risk getting stuck with the bill.
…
“The hole-in-one insurance business dates back nearly 100 years — but it was originally intended for a different purpose.
…
“By the 1990s, the hole-in-one insurance industry had a total market value of $220m. An estimated 30% of all Japanese golfers shelled out $50-$70/year to insure themselves against up to $3.5k in expenses.”
…
https://thehustle.co/the-strange-business-of-hole-in-one-insurance/
Yep, sorry all. I was on the wrong Monday message board.
There’s a crazy movement in the UK called MaskFree, They want masking banned from doctors surgeries and hospitals. They have a whole petition filled with pseudo-science to say masks do nothing and are very harmful… and signed by some doctors it seems. I think they are serious though it is hard to tell these days.
Well, I think, why stop at masks?
ClothesFree! Extend this to all cloth on the body. Protest the mandate to wear clothes to the doctor, the hospital or anywhere! There is lots of evidence that clothes are really harmful. We humans lost most of our hair when we started wearing clothes. Now we can’t stay warm without them. Clothes kill!
Pork barrel election spend ratio of 3.17x pork to nominal mental health budget barrel by Scomo for seat of Bass in Tasmania.
If the ‘buy election’ pork ratio extrapolated to Australia, would make mental health budget $18,681,666,075.
“Scott Morrison makes new mental health announcements
“Scott Morrison is announcing a $55m mental health partnership with the Tasmanian government in the marginal seat of Bass:”
The Guardian
Population of Bass: 76,532
$55m ÷ 76,532
= $718.65 per person.
Australian population: 25,995,500
25,995,500 x $718.65
= $18,681,666,075
“About the 2021 Federal Budget
“In the lead up to the Budget, the Australian Government stated that their spending on mental health reached ‘a record high’ of $5.9bn in 2020-21, far in excess of the $3.6bn most recently reported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW, 2018-19) and the PC Inquiry.28 May 2021
https://mhaustralia.org › docs
2021 Federal Budget Analysis – Mental Health Australia
@$5.9bn = $226.96 per person.
So Bass in Tasmanian has a pork barrel election spend ratio of 3.17x pork to nominal mental health budget barrel.
Cory Doctorow says ” It’s a toddler’s fantasy of manifesting your will.” re Musk & Mars.
And of “Gates’s foundation is the key force in fighting against covid vaccine copyright and patent waivers at the WTO, insisting that the world’s poorest billions should rely on charitable donations from rich countries, waiting for vaccines until the wealthy minority are vaxed, boosted, and boosted again.
“This is a catastrophic, even genocidal idea. Gates’s ideology denied the world’s poorest access to AIDS drugs, directly leading to a vast population of permanently immunocompromised people in the global south. These same people are especially vulnerable to covid, but again Gates’s ideology denies them vaccines. Worse: immunocompromised people take longer to recover from covid, meaning they have a higher chance of incubating new strains, and when those new strains emerge, they rip through immunocompromised, unvaccinated populations.”
…
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/11/a-dent-in-the-universe/#eminently-guillotineable
Found, a link to a non-paywalled copy of “Why Covid-19 will never become endemic” by Raina MacIntyre. It is brilliant; a must-read.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g2dN46l_HIf1i90IFcmzoLTCmb4JsqT1/view
Calare.
“[Nationals candidate Andrew] Gee has put [ United Australia Party candidate Adam] Jannis second on his how-to-vote card.”
“United Australia party candidate Adam Jannis was booed by the audience after saying that as soon as one young person undergoes gender reassignment surgery, others follow because “it becomes a fashionable thing”.
….
“Shortening odds
Hook says it’s hard to tell how much of a dent her campaign is putting in Gee’s margin.
“I’m not really a Sportsbet girl but apparently a month ago we were 34-1, and are now 6-1,” she said.
…
“Former Indi MP Cathy McGowan … there was a large number of traditional Liberal voters in Calare who will support Hook “because they really don’t like being represented by a National”.
“Some of them are going to vote for … Hook so that she becomes the member, and at the next election they’ll hopefully get a Liberal member.”
…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/13/in-the-nsw-central-west-the-talk-once-again-is-of-shaking-the-nationals-grip-on-calare
Interesting to see women differentiate after mishandling of rape and Porter allegation. See graphs at nd if page…
“ALP 54.5% leads the L-NP 45.5% on a two-party preferred basis as early voting begins this week
May 10 2022
“The ALP has a large lead of 9% points over the L-NP on a two-party preferred basis when the preferences of minor party voters are allocated based on preference flows at the 2019 Federal Election according to the latest Roy Morgan Poll conducted from May 2-8, 2022.
“When looking at primary support, and including those who can’t say who they support, the ALP was at 33%, support for the L-NP was at 31.5% and there were 35.5% of people who either supported a minor party, independent or who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) say who they supported – a higher proportion of electors than supported either of the major parties.
“Allocating preferences based on how people voted at the 2019 Federal Election shows the ALP on 54.5% (up 0.5% points from a week ago) compared to the L-NP on 45.5% (down 0.5% points).
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8967-roy-morgan-poll-on-federal-voting-intention-may-2022-202205091128
Losing SSI benefits at age 18 provides criminals for 20 years. Exeptional USA!
Stakeholder to…
Stumble to…
Inmate…
… pathway for private jails – gaols. Almost a fully taxpayer subsidised system, not including trauma and other externalities. Exceptional private enclosure system. The lean mean incarceration machine
*
“As a result of these charges, the annual likelihood of incarceration increases by a statistically significant 60% in the two decades following SSI removal. The costs to taxpayers of enforcement and incarceration from SSI removal are so high that they nearly eliminate the savings to taxpayers from reduced SSI benefits.
….
“We estimate the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades.
“Does Welfare Prevent Crime? The Criminal Justice Outcomes of Youth Removed From SSI
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29800
Looking at NP how to vote ballot form; they’ve taken the standard ballot form and deleted the symbols and affiliation of each candidate. I guess that’s so that voters aren’t aware that the NP have given their preferences to Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer followed by NP friendly independents.
Is their a law against this, disfigurement of an electoral form or something?
Definitely misleading and deceptive under the Competition and Consumer Act.
AFAIK this is NP only
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_and_Consumer_Act_2010#Misleading_or_Deceptive_Conduct
“Australia led the world in per-capita COVID infections”*
*
COVID is NOW.
“Burnet Institute chief executive Brendan Crabb said. “And as a nation, we’re also ignoring the health impact. How many of the 350,000-plus active cases in Australia right now will have chronic impacts? Overseas data suggests 10 per cent of them. And that will impact your heart, impact your lungs, organs and brain.
“It’s not nothing.”
“According to University of Melbourne epidemiologist Nancy Baxter, the numbers may “get worse”.
“We’re at a point where COVID is now one of the major killers of Australians, and probably by the end of the year is going to be one of the top three,” she told the ABC.
“And with increasing case numbers, new sub-variants [will be] coming in. This may drive it even further, which would have a bigger impact.”
“According to global databases, Australia led the world in per-capita COVID infections (*if you ignore the tiny islands of Montserrat, Anguilla and The Falklands).
On Friday 54,591 cases were reported across Australia, on the back two consecutive days of about 58,000 cases, with Western Australia bracing for new infection records.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-15/covid-infections-in-australia-among-worlds-highest/101062364
*
rog, good pick of NP deception. I am not inclined to touch a NP voting card. And all political funding & promotion needs to be under strict rules. We are.