Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here.
John Quiggin 
The power and wealth accumulation of the rich and super rich is out of control in Australia. It is hard to draw any other conclusion.
Ultra-High-Net-Worth individuals are often defined as having a net worth of $10 million or more. Frankly, any person with a net worth of over $5 million or a household income of over $500,000 is too rich, IMHO. Nobody needs that much wealth especially when other people are struggling badly and inequality is continually worsening, as it is in Australia.
A couple of ABC reports are illustrative. I refer to last night’s Tax Office report on Four Corners and today’s news report on the Comm Bank’s refusal to pay back $270 millions worth of excessive’ fees as ordered to by ASIC. These reports illustrate the imbalance in power between the rich, who get away with not paying back overcharged amounts and not paying back much of the A$52 billion of outstanding unpaid taxes which they owe. Meanwhile, the poor, including the working poor, can’t get affordable accommodation in this country or accommodation at all.
This level of inequality is obscene as is the power of the rich and super rich in this country.
Just some general thoughts, post 2000 the internet was still developing and we believed that we were entering that was known as the information superhighway. Unfortunately the information has been corrupted, alternative facts have flourished and we now have an unregulated and unlimited turbocharged speedway. Policy has become redundant and identity is what drives politics – hence Trump et al. Locally banking scams are in the $Bs, an eye watering amount.
Clearly we’ve lost the plot and need to regain control of this runaway behemoth.
Recently Anne Applebaum suggested regulating the internet so that some level of transparency and accountability are achieved. This would also involve revealing and eliminating the dark money trail and appropriately taxing the very rich. On a govt level we need to be studying the cyber warfare emanating from the autocracies.
“Reports to Scamwatch indicate scammers are targeting older Australians with retirement savings, who may be looking for investment opportunities. We know of a recent case where an elderly woman lost her life savings after seeing a deepfake Elon Musk video on social media, clicking the link and registering her details online. She was assigned a ‘financial advisor’ and could see on an online dashboard she was apparently making returns, but she couldn’t withdraw her money.”
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/scam-losses-decline-but-more-work-to-do-as-australians-lose-27-billion
Hope is alive. (I remind myself.)
We are getting over covid here. Unfortunately it appears I did give it to my elderly relative. On the positive side, the paxlovid seemed to help them quite a bit, thank goodness. It is very expensive though, so mask up when you go in places like pharmacies, y’all. (That’s just a theory though. No idea where I got it. I stopped masking in 2023, and now, I am going to start again, in some places.)
Let’s just say, I have some regrets.
N,
My wife (65 and with some health issues) and myself (71) still mask (N95s) anywhere we go where there are people, indoors at least. Of course, we are vaxed too. In addition, we don’t anywhere much anyway. We live on a property with a bit of space and we have plenty to do here. We get groceries and many other things delivered, most of the time. We safely visit and get safely visited by close relatives. That’s it.
We are not the least bit interested in catching COVID-19, flu or anything else transmissible. I cannot fully understand why most modern people seem to want to get sick all f the time. If only our government(s) had not abandoned the ideas of public health, protection of all the population, especially the vulnerable, and the proper practices of non-pharmaceutical protections (masks, HEPA filters) plus vaxes plus testing, tracing, isolating, quarantine and other measures.
I can’t write more about our governments, our elites or the short-sightedness and credulity of the masses or I will descend into tapping out lots of angry words. It simply does no good. The global population and the world system are beyond saving in their current configurations (let me use that word).
Good for you, Iko! Yes, avoid it if you can. If only I’d gotten another booster in the spring. Well, lesson learned.
Thank goodness for our scientists – I am grateful. Humans will always make mistakes, but at least sometimes, we can fix them, too. It is tough times for them now, but things will get better. (They have to.)
I avoid indoor public places as much as I can, and mask when I know I’ll be somewhere crowded, like an airport.
Fully vaccinated for everything on offer (Flu, RSV, Covid, shingles)
Got covid by ignoring these precautions just after lockdown ended. Since then, no respiratory infections.
I am vaccinated up-to-date against Covid-19, not vaccinated against Flu, RSV or shingles. That might sound surprising and inconsistent. Flu and RSV vaxes I am not worrying about because our lifestyle is so permanently locked down, by choice. This means our non-pharmaceutical measures (isolation, distancing, masks) have been sufficient to date to avoid Flu, RSV and even colds since we commenced measures. We last had a flu in August 2019 (before Covid-19 broke out in and from China).
The shingles vax I should get but I won’t go near doctors practices or other vax sites while all the respiratory diseases are all circulating so I am putting it off a bit. Nobody else will wear a mask even at those sites.
This experience, to my mind, shows that the non-pharma measures can work well, if you are able and willing to keep mostly isolated and use masks when necessary. For many people, continuous isolation is not an option workwise and socially. In that case vaxing across the board, as much as possible, definitely makes sense.
What works best of course, for the least risk in a fairly active and mobile life, is the full repertoire of vaxxing and other non-pharma measures for multi-layered defence. It is deplorable that our society threw the full repertoire of responses out of the window.
JQ is using the full repertoire of defences for an active life. I am sure the minor inconveniences are more than outweighed by being able to remain free of all respiratory infections for literally years on end.
To add to my above post, if the flu circulating was bird flu with human to human transmission then of course I would prioritise getting vaccinated against it, once a vaccine was available. The same would apply if it became clear that a seasonal flu had mutated into pandemic flu. With seasonal flu, the risk assessment for a person near-permanently locked down by personal choice becomes different. There is no great imperative for me to seek the flu shot by breaking lockdown to attend the one place where I might catch it. That is to say a place where walking and seated respiratory infections abound and nobody (except me) masks.
Domestic solar power in Australia has almost turned into a boondoggle. There are a number of factors working against the environmental and financial usefulness of having solar power and installing solar power. I refer to about 5 kW “worth” of solar panels on the roof of the average home plus the necessary inverter and possibly a battery (or not).
Domestic consumers are not properly appraised of all these issues unless they do their own research. Consumers cannot trust vendors’ advice. Vendors will almost always try upsell consumers, often with inappropriate systems which suffer some or all the risks outlined above.
I will post a little more about this soon. Legacy non-compliant installations are also an issue as I have recently found out to my cost.