Omphalos

John Quiggin5 Comments

A classic poser that first arose in debates over creation vs evolution is the notion of ‘apparent age’. The idea is that, if God created the earth, He would necessarily have done so in a way that gave it an apparent natural history. For example, even though Adam had never been born, he would, on this account have been given a navel. As (I think) Bertrand Russell observed, once we start on this, there’s no way we can stop. Perhaps the universe was created 10 minutes ago, containing us, our memories and an apparent history going back to the Big Bang.

Anyway, a couple of commentators on my first anniversary post noted that they imagined I’d been blogging for years. I had exactly the same perception when I started, with respect to people who’d only been going for a few months or even weeks. Obviously if there are any cues that distinguish newbies from old hands, they are too subtle to be picked by someone who is, by definition, a newbie themselves. More generally, the social conventions of the blogosphere are such that newcomers are absorbed very rapidly, cross-linked, added to blogrolls, and, before you know it, seem like part of the furniture.

Perhaps this will change. Blogging in the US seems much more dominated by ‘first movers’, though there’s still room at the top for high-quality entrants like Kieran Healy and Kevin Drum at Calpundit .

Academic relativism

John Quiggin14 Comments

Just when we thought Windschuttle had been blogged to death, the issue has been taken up on the other side of the Pacific. First, Erin O’Connor posted a long piece derived from an uncritically pro-Windschuttle source, taking at face value his claims to be a critic, rather than a practioner, of cultural relativism. Then Henry Farrell at Gallowglass responded with some of the many critical links including mine, and O’Connor posted an update (Thanks to Ehud Rostoker for the alert).

There’s a lot of other interesting stuff on O’Connor’s blog, Critical Mass. In the same post, there’s a link to Eugene Volokh, who links to and slams this (nearly six months old) press release from Gun Control Australia attacking the University of Adelaide for “supporting” pro-gun academic John Whitley. As Volokh points out

the group is essentially trying to pressure a university to shut up a faculty member who is making law reform proposals with which it disagrees.

(Obligatory Voltaire (mis)quote and allusion to JS Mill On Liberty here). I haven’t heard anything about this and Whitley is still at Adelaide and still involved in the debate. Still, statements of the kind made by Gun Control Australia have a chilling effect on debate and are always to be deplored.

Back at Critical Mass, O’Connor gives a personal account of how she came to be so down on academic relativism, after spending eight years becoming a “resident Body Critic” (every top English department must have one, she informs us). Great reading.

Finally, a little quibble. I know the spelling of my name is not obvious from its pronunciation, and I always take care to spell it out when I’m talking to someone. But how can people get it so consistently wrong when they’re taking it from a printed source? O’Connor has it right in one sentence and wrong in the very next one, and she’s not alone in this.

Monday Message Board

John Quiggin22 Comments

It’s time for the regular Monday Message Board when you have your chance to have your say on any topic whatsoever (as always, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please).

Although I begged off this job in my birthday message, I’ll probably end up doing a “state of the blogosphere” piece before too long, so any suggestions/opinions/predictions of imminent collapse will be of particular interest to me. But, as always, anything goes!

Update I wasn’t sure if there would be much interest in the new GG. But judging from the Message Board there’s heaps, including Rob Corr’s brush with fame.

What I'm reading

John Quiggin

Drawn from life by Stella Bowen, kindly lent to me by reader and fellow-economist, Nick Gruen. Bowen was an Adelaide-born painter who, like most artistically inclined Australians before the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, left for Europe at the first opportunity and never returned. She took up with the American writer Ford Madox Ford and sacrificed her career to what she perceived to be his greater talent. I haven’t read any of Ford’s books, and I guess we can’t know what Bowen would have produced given a free run, so I’m not going to make a call on this for the moment.

Inevitably, I’m also reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My son Daniel devoured it on the afternoon of its release and now I have to read it as well if I’m to remain au courant with the younger members of the literary world. As always, JK Rowling does an excellent job, and its a pleasant read, with the trend to ever-longer volumes seemingly having levelled out after The Goblet of Fire.

One year on

John Quiggin10 Comments

Today marks the end of my first year of blogging. Although I didn’t note it at the time, I started on the winter solstice, which in Canberra means something. The year has seen a lot of changes for me, most of them positive. I’ve moved from Canberra, where I lived most of my life from 1970 onwards, to Brisbane, and, correspondingly from ANU, my alma mater, to the University of Queensland. I’ve finished up an ARC Research Fellowship and managed to land the best job available in Australian academia, a Federation Fellowship. I’ve become a father-in-law, and am looking forward, in due course, to becoming a grandfather. All of these transitions have involved some breaking of old and familiar ties and the beginning of new adventures

In blogging terms, a year is still long enough to go from newbie to old hand. I’ve moved from the training wheels of Blogger to the Mac-like elegance of Movable Type, and have established myself in a fairly satisfactory corner of Ozplogistan (this term based on ‘plog’ for ‘political weblog’, was coined by Bright Cold Matt in a comments thread, and popularised by Ken Parish. Matt gives more etymological details in the comments thread for this post). I was going to list the people who play a central role in this virtual universe, but I realised I was sure to omit someone, and you all know who you are anyway.

I was also going to do a “state of Ozplogistan” assessment, but I see my blogtwin, Tim Dunlop, has already written one. I’ll just make two observations. The first is that, after a period of explosive growth, blogging seems to have entered what economists call the “mature phase” (this refers to industry structure, not to the content of posts!), with roughly equal numbers of entries and exits. Among those most missed, I’ll nominate Don Arthur, whom I keep on the blogroll in the forlorn hope that he’ll finish his thesis and resume blogging. My other observation is that the political makeup of Ozplogistan now resembles that of Oz, whereas, when I started, the echo effect of American-inspired warblogging was still a dominant factor.

My big problem, coincidentally mentioned by Homer Paxton in one of today’s comments is “How in heaven’s name do you combine Uni work, blogging, family time, reading etal.” I’m still trying to figure that one out. If I find the answer I’ll tell you. If I join the legion of departed bloggers, you’ll know I haven’t managed to crack it.

Finally, thanks to all who have linked to my posts, commented in my comment boxes, or just read and enjoyed the blog. A particular thankyou to Rob Corr, who provided hosting for the new site.

KM on GW

John Quiggin2 Comments

I trawled through my hard drive, trying to find something I wrote last year about the IPCC and Ian Castles’ criticism of it. However, Keneth Miles (link malfunctioning for reasons I can’t figure out, use the one in the blogroll) has made most of the points I was going to, and has lots more, including the disappointing news that Castles has joined the Lavoisier Group, an organisation based on the idea that, if we all close our eyes and wish hard enough, the whole problem of global warming will magically disappear.

New on the website

John Quiggin1 Comment

I’m in the middle of updating the journal articles on the website. The site is now pretty much update for current publications, and I plan to go back to those from 1992 and earlier as soon as I get time. This is a good time for anybody who has suggestions to make them. I do pay attention, even if, either because of disagreement or inertia, I don’t implement them all.

To complicate matters further, I’m switching to a new computer setup at home, using a Powerbook G4 as my primary computer. This is a job which has not got simpler over time, or with new and improved versions of Mac OS. I didn’t get an exact count, but I appear to have about 80 000 files, which is, I suppose consistent with creating 10/day over 20 years of use, and then doubling that with application and system files. Most need to be transferred from the old computer to the new one, but there are some that shouldn’t be (for example, computer-specific preferences, so it’s a messy business. Add to that some touchy hardware (notably my Telstra cable modem) and there’s several hours of downtime involved. But it all seems to be up and running now, and is definitely an improvement, as the Powerbook supports a second (external )monitor, which is a big aid to productivity.

The English disease

John Quiggin18 Comments

One of the striking features of world trade is the fact that nearly all the English-speaking countries run big current account deficits. The United States, formerly a big net exporter, has been in deficit for twenty years or so. The deficit has now reached 5 per cent of GDP despite a continuing recession/slow recovery. The UK has mostly run deficits for the past twenty years or so, though it still has strongly positive net investment income, reflecting its century or more as the main source of world investment. Australia and New Zealand are consistent deficit countries. Although they occasionally reach balance on the goods and services account, they are large net debtors, and therefore have consistent deficits on the income account. The only exception (and a relatively recent one) is Canada. Conversely of course, the rest of the developed world, that is, in essence, the EU and Japan run fairly consistent surpluses.

Why is this? I’m not attracted to cultural explanations for a couple of reasons. First, both the UK and US were, for a very long time, the major surplus countries. Second, if you go back only 25 years, the “English disease” referred to rampant union demands, class conflict and rigidities that hampered productivity. At least in the sphere of popular factoid, all these disabilities are now presented as characterising the EU and Japan rather than the English-speakers.

Of course, the change in stereotypes about laziness etc reflects the greater impact of neoliberal policy reforms in the English-speaking countries. So my question is: does neoliberalism cause current account deficits? And if so, is this a good thing reflecting the greater attractiveness of investment in these countries (the ‘consenting adults’ view, put forward prominently, though in a slightly different context by John Pitchford). Or is it a bad thing, reflecting debts incurred because of excessive borrowing by households and debts pumped up in speculative investment booms. Readers won’t be surprised to learn that I hold the latter view.

At the moment the’consenting adults’ view is dominant, particularly among supporters of neoliberalism. But looking at the way this group changed their tune after the Asian and Argentine crises, it’s not hard to predict that, in the event that things go sour, they will switch to the latter view very quickly and, as far as they can manage it, retrospectively (search on ‘crony capitalism’ for examples).

Via Jack Strocchi, update billmon at Whiskey Bar has more detail on the US case, including a neat way of presenting the data I haven’t seen before. In recent years, imports have grown by 40 cents for every dollar of GDP growth. I need to think a bit more about this.

A number of commentators have defended the ‘consenting adults’ view and have asked for a ‘market failure’ reason why it isn’t right. The obvious candidate is the moral hazard produced when financial markets are deregulated but the central bank continues to act as a lender of last resort. Exhibit A is Australia in the 1980s, which is when we ran our foreign debt up to its current levels. I don’t suppose anyone is going to claim that the investments of Bond, Skase, Elliott and others were good ones. Most of the debt in this period was borrowed through the Big Four banks. In a regulated system, they would have been stopped. In a fully deregulated system they would have failed. As it was they were rescued (Westpac being the most notable case). The story of state-regulated institutions (building societies and State Banks) is more complex, but basically the same. I put this argument forward in a piece in 1992, Partial financial deregulation and the current account?, Economic Papers 11(1), 53?56, which I notice is not up on my website. Another job waiting to be done!

Working hours – the worm turns

John Quiggin28 Comments

Ross Gittins latest column says

the great epidemic of overwork is subsiding. Of late, we’re working less, not more. And, in any case, the latest research suggests the whole story’s been a bit overdone.

The first point is, I think correct. Gittins quotes ABS data to show that average working hours for full-time employees increased from 42 to 45 hours a week between 1982 and 1994, levelled out, and have declined slightly over the past two years.

This seems pretty much consistent with the anecdotal evidence. Concern about increasing working hours started in the early 1990s and was widespread by the mid-1990s. There was a clear cultural shift around this time – people who willingly worked very long hours, who had typically been presented in very positive terms in the 1980s were presented much more negatively. A particular turning point was the publication of an email sent out at 10pm by a partner in a law firm complaining that no-one else was working. He was held up to universal ridicule. And increasingly, people decided the game wasn’t worth the candle and pulled out of full-time work altogether. Clive Hamilton’s “downshifters” are part of this response. So the decline in working hours is basically an illustration of Stein’ Law “If a trend is unsustainable, it won’t be sustained” I’ve been pointing out the unsustainability of the push to longer worker hours and greater work intensity for quite a few years (PDF file), so I’m not surprised to see a turnaround.

On the other hand, I don’t agree with the claim that “the whole story’s a bit overdone”. It’s important to observe that the rise in fulltime working hours was a reversal of a trend that had continued for more than a century. It was accompanied by a substantial increase in job stress and job insecurity, and these things were needed to induce workers to put in longer hours. Gittins makes the point that a lot of unpaid overtime was “compensated” by salary packages, but the shift towards such packages in the 1980s was precisely one of the devices used to extract more work effort, along with the conversion of employees into supposedly self-employed “contractors”.

Gittins also quotes data on the relatively small proportion of employees who said they would rather work less hours for less money, but doesn’t mention the large proportion of those on long hours who said they wanted to work less hours for the same money (12.4 per cent of those working 49-59 hours and 21 per cent of those working 60+ hours). This response “was not a preference option, [but] interviewers recorded this response when it was given. ” You might say this is simple wishful thinking, but very few people working part-time or standard full-time hours gave this spontaneous response. I’d interpret it as the response of people who feel that they’ve been pressured into working excessive hours for no extra compensation.

Beazley beaten!

John Quiggin12 Comments

Of the many commentators in both print and blog media who’ve written their views, I think the most accurate were, Margo Kingston and Ross Gittins. My main views:

First, the poll-driven choice of Beazley as the anti-Crean candidate turned the ballot into a referendum on the ‘small target strategy’ run by Beazley (advised by Swan and Smith) in 2001. My waning hopes for the Federal ALP have been strengthened slightly by the fact that Beazley was so thoroughly beaten.

Second, having positioned himself as the ‘policy’ candidate, Crean now has to actually deliver on this. In particular, , he has to decide whether he’s for lower taxes or higher services. At present, as Ross Gittins points out, Labor is the ‘denial of opportunity cost’ party. Of course, this is true to some extent of all opposition parties.
Given the absence of any serious policy initiatives from Labor for the past seven years, and the sporadic attention of the government to anything more than triumphalism and wedge politics, a serious policy program could make a big impact.

Third, and assuming he meets the policy test, Crean’s position has been strengthened by this episode. He called Beazley’s bluff, faced him down and beat him decisively, and, in the process, acquired some sort of identity. I don’t know whether this will be reflected in the polls, but it should be.