Category: Economics – General

Generations change, but the game remains the same

John Quiggin89 Comments

I tried to ignore it, but Employment Services Minister Mark Arbib’s resurrection of the (Tony Abbott?) “job snobs” line has turned into yet another tiresome round of the generation game. This time it’s Generation Y who are copping the flak for being “Generation Lazy”, a collection of job-hoppers and dole bludgers.

How many times must these cannonballs fly? Arbib (born 1971) was barely out of nappies when the phrase “dole bludgers” was coined and applied to the unemployed members of Generation Jones (the younger boomers who missed out on the fun of the 60s), a group to which I briefly belonged. That continued right through the late 1970s, and into the recession of the early 1980s. And even before that, the older boomers had been routinely labelled as work-shy hippies.

The recession of the 1990s hit all groups of the population, with older workers suffering even more than youth. Still, the old cliches were dragged out and applied to Gen X-ers (remember the Paxtons?)

Now the economy has soured again, and Gen X bosses and pollies are kicking their Gen Y subordinates. If the slowdown drags on as long as I expect, it will be the turn of Gen Z/Millennial/Potter before long.

As I said back in 2000

Much of what passes for discussion about the merits or otherwise of particular generations is little more than a repetition of unchanging formulas about different age groups Ð the moral degeneration of the young, the rigidity and hypocrisy of the old, and so on.

You couldn’t get a better example than the latest round of recycled cliches.

The myth of baseload power demand

John Quiggin134 Comments

Today’s Fin has a leader arguing that we should be laying the ground for a move to nuclear power. It’s commendably realistic about the long time lags involved, and argues we should get started on preparations now. My view is that it would be better to wait and see if the US makes progress on its (currently faltering) attempts to revive the industry there. But the thing that really got me going was the repetition of the claim that alternative energy sources are problematic because they can’t meet “baseload power demand”.

I’ve said before that this claim is wrong, but I think it’s time to sharpen my position, and state two claims:

*There is no relevant sense in which baseload power demand is a meaningful concept in our current electricity supply system.

*Any electricity supply system likely to exist in the next 40 years and capable of meeting peak power demand will have no problems meeting baseload demand.

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Events

John Quiggin4 Comments

I’ll be speaking at two public events on Thursday. First there is the University of Wollongong Economic and Social Annual Public Lecture, 11:30 Thursday 23 July 2009 (details here) where I will speak on Climate Change & the Global Financial Crisis. Then I’ll be speaking in the Whitlam Institute Series on the Financial Crisis, in Parramatte, along with Steve Keen and Guy Debelle, on the topic “After the Crisis”. (details here).

Last week, I did a videorecording which was presented at the ACTU jobs summit on Monday 20 July. My paper is here (PDF).

Global warming and the moon landings

John Quiggin47 Comments

This NYT story about moon landing “sceptics” provides some interesting evidence on the broader phenomenon of anti-science thinking on climate change, AIDS, UFOs and other issues. The moon landing case is of particular interest in a number of respects
* There is no real ideological or interest group motive for scepticism beyond a generalized suspicion of governments and scientists
* The style of argument is virtually identical to that of the other cases mentioned above. As the NYT notes

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, said “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think.” For the most part, he explained, “They don’t undertake to prove that their view is true” so much as to “find flaws in what the other side is saying.” And so, he said, argument is a matter of accumulation instead of persuasion. “They feel if they’ve got more facts than the other side, that proves they’re right.”

* The claim seems transparently absurd, but actually, it’s not much different from the other cases. All of them require that thousands of scientists and government officials should, for venal or sinister reasons, promote claims they know to be false that they should have fooled millions of other people qualified to examine such evidence, not to mention the public at large, but that, nevertheless, a minority of people with no particular qualifications or expertise should be able to detect the imposture.

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Review of Capitalism Unleashed

John Quiggin13 Comments

Several years ago, Andrew Glyn sent me a copy of his new book, Capitalism Unleashed, which I promised to review. But with one thing and another, I didn’t get to it, and then I received the news of his premature death, which set me back still further. I promised myself that I would do the review as a tribute to Andrew’s memory, and now, I’ve finally managed to do it.

Of course the environment now is radically different to the one in which the book was written, and that means the review must be to some extent informed by the wisdom of hindsight. In the introduction, Andrew notes as the first of the big open questions thrown up by the unleashing of capitalism

Will the ever more complex financial system implode in a major financial crisis and bring prolonged recession

We all know the answer now.

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