It’s time, once again for the Monday Message Board. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please. I’m hoping to do a post looking at the four years since 11 September 2001, but in the meantime I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Freedom on the March
The Egyptian elections were the subject of plenty of triumphalism when they were announced earlier in the year, and now it looks as if it was all justified. Not only did the elections go ahead, but with 88.6 per cent of the vote going to the pro-American incumbent, Hosni Mubarak, all that talk about how the ‘Arab street’ is opposed to US foreign policy has been refuted once again.
Education: more, please
In a post on education at CT, Chris
floats a hypothesis for commenters to shoot down if they want to.
However, since most of the commenters agree with Chris, it looks like I’ll have to provide the other side of the debate. I’m also not linking to any evidence, though I discussed a fair bit of it here
I’m going to argue, contrary to Chris and most of the commenters on his post that there’s no reason to suppose that, in aggregate, the proportion of the population undertaking post-secondary education is too high, and every reason to continue trying to remove obstacles to participation in education for students from poor and working class backgrounds. Further, I don’t think credentialism is an important factor in explaining observed changes in participation in education or the labour market.
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Why I blog*
I’ve been asked to write a short general piece about blogging, why, how and so on. Draft is over the fold. Comments welcome.
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Weekend reflections
Weekend Reflections is on again. Please comment on any topic of interest (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please). Feel free to put in contributions more lengthy than for the Monday Message Board or standard commnets.
Books and bombs
Tom Stafford points to academic publisher Elsevier’s involvement in the international arms trade. Even the legal aspects of this trade are deplorable, given the excessive readiness of governments and would-be governments to resort to armed force, but the boundary between legal and illegal arms trade is pretty porous. For example, there’s evidence that the arms fairs organised by Elsevier subsidiary Spearhead are venues for the illegal trade in landmines. Tom has a number of suggestions for possible responses.
Section 328 in Japan
I’ve been arguing against attempts to apply Australian electoral laws, requiring that “electoral material” include the name and address of an authorising person to blog posts and comments. But, judging by a report in the Age, the situation is far worse in Japan
By Quigger’s beard
Professor Bunyip coins a bon mot at my expense, saying in relation to a dispute between Sharon Beder and Leigh Cartwright over the effects of the Reagan tax cuts on revenue that
some of the itchier creatures in John Quiggin’s beard are the intellectual betters by an order of magnitude.
of one participant. Unfortunately, Prof B is not a professor of economics, and he applies the epithet to the wrong party in the dispute[1].
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Neither fish nor fowl
John Howard’s blistering attack on Telstra management is an example of why I’ve always regarded partial privatisation as the worst of both worlds. Although I’m unimpressed by Trujillo’s performance so far, I have some sympathy with his position as CEO of a company 51 per cent owned by the Australian government. To whom is he supposed to be responsible? The private minority shareholders? The Australian public as majority shareholders? The government? The shareholding ministers? The Liberal Party?
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Back in Brisbane
The trip back home was long and tiring, but I’m glad to be home again, and Brisbane is beautiful as always. There’s a lot to catch up on – Internet news only takes you so far – and I have quite a few posts planned, but jet lag and backlogs will probably slow me down for a while.
