Author: John Quiggin

A quick post for a long break

John Quiggin25 Comments

When my wife sent me the link, this ABC story was headlined Treasury head says Australians must work harder. It’s now been changed to “Australians must increase productivity: Treasury head”, which sounds a bit more reasonable, but I think is still a somewhat problematic.

I’ll try to discuss this in detail later, but for now I just want to push a point I’ve been making for a long time, which came up in comments recently. If governments want a simple reform that would improve our economic performance (though maybe not the standard measures of that performance), one of the best things they could do is legislate for six weeks annual leave as a standard employment condition. We have parental leave for parents of new babies, but there’s an equally big problem for parents of school age children trying to deal with the mismatch between school holidays (six weeks over summer, as well as term breaks) and the measly four weeks they are allowed, unchanged since the Whitlam government. And the rest of us could do with more of a break as well.

An extra week’s leave is like a 2 per cent wage increase. If annual leave were increased in a couple of stages to six weeks a year, it would only be necessary to find productivity increases or other offsets of 2 per cent, and, as Martin Parkinson implies, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Marxism without revolution: Capital

John Quiggin52 Comments

I’ve been writing series of posts examining the question – what is left of Marxism, as a way to understand the world, and as a way to change it, once it is accepted that capitalism is not going to be overthrown by a working class revolution. The first was about class and the second about crisis. Now for the final instalment: capital.

By the way, the first post got translated into Spanish, here. It’s one of the things that I still find stunning about the Internet that things like this can happen.
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Last day of the financial year

John Quiggin4 Comments

I’ve been travelling and going to meetings, hence slow posting. Light posting for a while to come, but I thought I’d throw in a last minute reminder that there’s still a few hours left in which to support the Queensland Cancer Council and claim a tax deduction in the process.

Thanks, everyone! More please!

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I’ve been travelling, so I only just got around to putting in my $100 as promised for the fundraising appeal. By the time I got to it, we were well past $1000, which is great. But there’s still a long way to go to the target of $5000. And, I’ve got a fair bit of training to do if I’m going to run the implied time of 1:55. So keep the money rolling in and keep me motivated to train hard.

Once again, thanks to everyone who has donated so far. The fact that I can raise funds for good causes is one of the things that motivates me to keep blogging especially at those times when it feels a bit like the 15k mark in a half-marathon.

Marxism without revolution: Crisis

John Quiggin39 Comments

I’m writing series of posts examining the question – what is left of Marxism, as a way to understand the world, and as a way to change it, once it is accepted that capitalism is not going to be overthrown by a working class revolution. Last time I talked about class. This post is about crisis. As before, the shorter JQ is “there are lots of valuable insights, but there’s a high risk of political paralysis.”

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Fundraiser

John Quiggin4 Comments

On the right hand sidebar you can see my latest fundraiser, a half-marathon run where I’ll be supporting the Queensland Cancer Council. It’s tax-deductible and there’s still time to donate before June 30, so you get the refund straight away (or, to think of it differently, you can give twice as much as you planned, and the government will pay half).

As I said last time, the deal with this fundraiser is that I’ll commit to a minute below two hours for each $1000 I can raise. We’re just about there for the first $1000, so to hurry things along, I’ll put in $100 of my own if the total gets past $900 by the end of tomorrow (Friday) evening.

Marxism without revolution: Class

John Quiggin48 Comments

I’ve mentioned Erik Olin Wright’s Envisaging Real Utopias a couple of times, and I’ve also been reading David Harvey’s Enigma of Capital and Jerry Cohen’s if You’re an Egalitarian How Come you’re so Rich. In different ways, all these books raise the question: what becomes of Marxism if you abandon belief in the likelihood or desirability of revolution[1]? To give the shorter JQ upfront, there are lots of valuable insights, but there’s a high risk of political paralysis.

I plan alliteratively, to organise my points under three headings: Class, Capital and Crisis, and in this post I’ll talk about class

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