Category: Uncategorized

Assessing the lockdown policy: a baseline comparison

John Quiggin48 Comments

Various people, mainly but not exclusively in the Murdoch Press, are still complaining about the cost of the lockdowns and other restrictions imposed to control the Covid-19 pandemic. But most of these people seem to think that, in the absence of the controls, we would have avoided the economic costs, without any additional deaths (or, for the more hard-nosed, with only some expendable old people who would have died soon anyway). So, I thought I’d fill the gap by doing a comparison of the actual outcome with a baseline case: no government-imposed restrictions and no economic policy response.

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Hydrogen

John Quiggin20 Comments

It’s now clear that we have the technology we need to run a completely decarbonized electricity generation system. South Australia is the world leader[1] generating more than 50 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, and aiming for 100 per cent renewables by 2030.

The unit cost of renewables is now well below that of carbon-based generation (and nuclear). The remaining big question regarding the economics of the transition is the cost of storage, taking account of the variable nature of solar PV and wind.

As I’ve pointed out before, any reversible process that uses energy is a potential storage technology – that’s true of batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, stored heat and many more. But hydrogen is a particularly appealing storage technology, because it offers the potential to decarbonize major industrial processes.

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So last millennium (repost from 2004, linking article from 1995)

John Quiggin13 Comments

I’m busy working on my book on the Economic Consequences of the Pandemic, and thinking about implications for the information economy. In the process, I dug up a blog post from 2004, which reproduces an article I wrote in 1995 (I can’t remember if I managed to get it published). An interesting aside is a reference to Camille Paglia, a big name back then, who did the whole Jordan Peterson thing earlier and better, though I’m obviously not a fan of either.

With 25 years of hindsight, I was quite pleased with how my 1995 piece stood up. But it would be interesting to see how others respond.

h.3 From 2004

Following up on a discussion at Crooked Timber, I looked at this much-linked piece by Camille Paglia, and was struck by its dated references to television and the 60s[1]. She goes on to talk about computers, but apparently sees the computer as nothing more than a turbocharged TV set. This impelled me to dig out a piece I wrote nearly ten years ago, making the point that far from privileging visual media, the computer, and particularly the Internet are contributing to a new golden age of text. Blogs weren’t thought of when I wrote this piece, but the argument anticipates them, I think.

fn1. Oddly enough, although the main argument is a restatement of positions that were familiar 50 years ago, the piece is full of references to the young, as though the current generation of young adults has been, in some way, more saturated in TV than were the baby booomers.

h3. The Coming Golden Age of Text

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Why a Job Guarantee will require higher taxation

John Quiggin23 Comments

Ever since I wrote Work for All with John Langmore back in 1994, I’ve been pushing the idea that a path to full employment requires an expansion of publicly provided services. For about the same length of time, Bill Mitchell has been putting forward similar (but not identical) proposals. At some point in this process, Bill became one of the advocates of what’s called Modern Monetary Theory, which makes the point that taxes don’t (directly) “fund” public expenditure. Rather, they ensure that the total demand for goods and services (for consumption and investment) don’t exceed the productive capacity of the economy, thereby generating inflation.

This reframing raises the question: does a Job Guarantee require higher taxation? The answer, using MMT reasoning, is “Almost certainly, yes”.

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The end of capitalism

John Quiggin15 Comments

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen to zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk. If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism. Not just a result of the pandemic. A trend that goes back to the GFC.

The climate emergency after the pandemic

John Quiggin17 Comments

In an excess of zeal, I’m planning an Australia-specific book (working title, Australia after the Apocalypse: rebuilding a livable future) which will deal with the social, cultural and economic implications of the bushfire and pandemic catastrophes. This will complement The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic which will be global in its scope, but more narrow in its focus on economic issues. Over the fold, the opening section of a chapter on the climate emergency

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Hard-hat utopians

John Quiggin30 Comments

That’s the title of my latest piece in Inside Story, pointing that, even though the occupations most affected by the Covid pandemic are dominated by women and young people, government responses have been focused on ‘hard hat’ sectors, mainly employing prime-age men.

I appeared before a Committee of the Queensland Parliament making this point. I don’t think I had a lot of impact, but I will keep on pushing.