A snippet on the Charter of Budget Honesty

John Quiggin5 Comments

At a tactical political level one important issue arises from the provisions of Clause 29 of the “Charter of Budget Honesty”, under which either party may request costings of their election programs from the Departments of Finance and Treasury. Obviously Labor will come under pressure to seek such a costing, pressure to which Kim Beazley succumbed last time around.

Although it’s hard to predict the politics in advance, Labor would probably be better advised to get an independent costing from a consultancy like Access Economics[1] before issuing its policies. Government pressure to submit policies to Treasury and Finance could be the occasion for an attack on the politicisation of the Public Service.

fn1. Just after I wrote this, I read an interesting story in the Fin, regarding large-scale illegal downloading of information from the computers at Access, much of it allegedly ending up in the hands of rival consulting outfit ACIL. An apparent target of the exercise was to determine whether Access was costing Labor’s promises, and, if so, to get hold of the costings. (Thanks to reader John Warburton for alerting me to this).

Down to Gehenna

John Quiggin5 Comments

I can remember discovering, with something of a shock, that Armageddon was a real place (modern Megiddo). So, I shouldn’t have been too surprised to find out today that Gehenna is the name of a valley near Jerusalem, bearing no obvious marks of being on the road to eternal damnation. I also got to see Golgotha and Mount Zion – I don’t think my reading of Biblical allusions will be quite the same after this.

Do bloggers make a difference?

John Quiggin10 Comments
.!.

In the light of pieces like Trevor Cook’s in the Fin recently, I was beginning to think blogs were making a difference for the better in the mainstream media. But the fact that the Oz can run an op-ed piece on gun control by discredited ex-academic John Lott suggest that a lot more remains to be done.

Lott has been exposed in every possible way by bloggers (of all political persuasions and none) as a liar, a fabricator, and even as an Internet cross-dresser[1] (for the gory details visit the indefatigable Tim Lambert). Yet not only is he still sitting in a cosy billet at the American Enterprise Institute, but newspapers are apparently still willing to publish him. Clearly bloggers have a lot more work to do. Ken Parish takes on the job of demolishing Lott’s latest piece of nonsense, as does Tim Lambert.

fn1. Having said all this, it’s necessary to confront the ad hominem issue. A logical argument doesn’t become invalid because it is put forward by a liar. But an Op-ed piece about an issue like gun control can’t consist exclusively of abstract logical argument. The arguments have to be given some factual basis. And any piece written by Lott should come with a warning, “Do not accept any factual assertion in this article”.

Where will the next bin Laden come from ?

John Quiggin49 Comments

The latest atrocious murders committed by Al Qaeda raise a number of thoughts for me, as does the swift killing/capture of those apparently responsible for the murder of Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia.

First, however bad the crimes that have been committed in our name, nothing that has yet been revealed comes close to the gratuitous evil of Al Qaeda. That shouldn’t be taken as an excuse, or a reason for playing down such crimes; in the presence of such an enemy its more necessary than ever to keep our own hands clean and to be seen to do so. But nothing should be taken to mitigate the guilt of the Al Qaeda terrorists or to suggest that there is any possible compromise that can be made with them.
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On the road

John Quiggin7 Comments

I’m off today on my long-planned trip to Jerusalem and Paris. Posting will be intermittent (not, I hope, nonexistent),so feel free to use this post to start up any new discussion you like.

For those who want something to chew on, Ken Parish has returned to the fray with a series of excellent and thought-provoking posts. This one manages to move effortlessly from Gen X to economic growth in China and there’s also a discussion of Latham’s values.

Update My connections are working OK so far, but then, I’ve only got as far as Brisbane airport

Poverty and income gaps

John Quiggin34 Comments

A couple of readers have written to me suggesting it would be a good time to post about poverty and income inequality. First, I’ve been alerted to this story by Miranda Devine saying that the tragic house fire in Sydney a couple of days happened because the family couldn’t afford blankets. It’s often been asserted that poverty is an out-of-date concept, but there is still plenty of absolute deprivation in modern societies. There’s some evidence onhunger in the US here. Although I don’t have the data handy, the proportion of the population living below the US poverty line (based on a PPP conversion) is actually slightly higher in Australia than in the US – much higher in both countries than in most developed countries. Of course the biggest problems are those of indigenous Australians (from Devine’s report, this includes the family in the Sydney tragedy) but there’s nothing to be complacent about more generally. And there’s no justification for looking only within Australia. We can ignore poverty in the world as a whole if we choose, but that doesn’t mean the world will choose to ignore us.
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Guns, smoke, global warming and Microsoft

John Quiggin52 Comments

If you’ve spent any time around the blogosphere, or looking at thinktank websites, you’ll be aware that the following opinions tend to go together:

* widespread ownership of guns saves lives

* tobacco smoke is harmless (if not to smokers then to anyone who breathes it second-hand)

* global warming is a myth

There’s not too much mystery about this. The kinds of characteristics that would encourage the adoption of any one of these beliefs (make your own list) obviously encourage the others. What’s surprising to me is how frequently, at least among thinktanks these opinions are correlated with support for Microsoft, and, more particularly, denunciation of open-source software.
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Licensed to kill

John Quiggin17 Comments

According to this report, the man who killed two students and wounded five others in shootings at Monash Uni a couple of years ago is “not guilty due to mental impairment”. It’s a pity those responsible for giving him a license to own four guns didn’t inquire into his mental state first.

More Fed Fellow Fun

John Quiggin5 Comments

I’ve been enjoying a visit from my friend and co-author Simon Grant for the last couple of days. We’ve been working on fairly abstruse aspects of the economics of uncertainty, though with an eye to practical applications to issues like an analysis of the precautionary principle.

However, we downed tools this afternoon when it was announced that Simon has been awarded a Federation Fellowship. This is only the second such Fellowship in Economics, mine being the first.

Obviously, I’m very happy about this, and particularly about the fact that it will bring Simon back to Australia (he’s currently at Rice university in the US).