economics
the dismal science
~ Thomas Carlyle
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
~ John Maynard Keynes (attrib.)
Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!
The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America.
Full Story »
Boo to Channel 4 UK
Why don’t you allow access from other countries to see and embed your promo videos for upcoming shows? Especially in countries to which you’re no doubt planning to sell the show? At least Sky 1 knows how to do it properly.
Full Story »
It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it
George Carlin’s Final 2005 Words To The World…sounding hugely relevant right now.
TW for rape analogy
Full Story »
Not the Front Page News: Qantas and Fijian union laws; ACTA to be signed this weekend
Not on the front page: Air Pacific, in which Qantas is a large minority stakeholder, allegedly paid for Fijian anti-union law to be drafted, Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement to be signed by countries including Australia.
Full Story »
Secular Sermon Quicklink: Getting Rich Is a Group Effort
Taxpayer-funded infrastructure and services are essential to the social stability that allows entrepreneurism to flourish. Try doing it without a robust law and order system which protects one’s individual rights under contract!
Full Story »
Feminists are not your enemy
As an economist and a feminist I can’t tell you irritating I find articles like this one from Lucy Kippist in The Punch, “Screw equal pay; what do women really want?” Academics and feminists who continue to prioritise the closing the gender-oriented wage gap disregard the huge list of unmanageable priorities that come with a [...]
Full Story »
Is the Genie out of the bottle?
Have we reached a tipping point in Australian politics? Will the protests end with a change of government?
Full Story »
Mothers working, not the end of the world
Conducted by researchers at University College London, it surveyed 19,000 British households to determine how parental employment affects a child’s behaviour throughout the first five years of life.
The results will startle those who think that children benefit from having a stay-at-home mum. In fact, the paper indicates that maternal employment can often improve the chances of having well-adjusted kids.
Full Story »
Today in petty irritations
I choose my radio station in the car for its mix of mostly music and very few ads. Which is why it was most irritating, in the short space of listening time involved in the train station run, to hear today’s host…
Full Story »
So what else happened in Parliament yesterday?
The media’s way too excited about the ‘meow’ incident to tell us, so Grog’s Gamut gave a summary of the day’s proceedings. Barnaby Joyce put in his regular carrying on like a pork chop time in the Senate Estimates Committee. And did you notice that despite the drop in GDP, the Terms of Trade figures are looking really good?
Full Story »
Neoliberal welfare and gender inequality
I suppose that by now, everyone in Australia has probably come across some version of the latest iteration of the hatin’-on-teen-mums discourse, which comes up with frightening regularity. This version of course, is part of the ‘tough love’ strategy being used by the Goverment, allegedly to get us back to surplus. There’s an extraordinary array [...]
Full Story »
I can’t decide…
whether Alan Greenspan deserves internet immortality more for referring to a hypothetically invisible entity as “unredeemably opaque” or for the phrase which spawned this epic Crooked Timber thread. I await the inevitable memetic offspring.
Full Story »
David Willets – yeah kinda, but not really
Image credit here. I’m a little sceptical of how the economics of David Willets’ comments are being reported in these two pieces so I’m going to save my analysis for Willets’ actual quotes. David Willets, British politician with the Conservative Party and UK Minister of State for Universities and Science, got this partly right. Feminism [...]
Full Story »
* Quicklink to recent open threads
CastIronBalcony: 
bluemilk: 
mindyhoyden: 
puzzlement: 
vivsmythe: 
ChallyWrites: 
ilauredhel: 
Recent Comments
skepticlawyer, Feminist Avatar, AMM, blue milk, Mel, skepticlawyer [...]
blue milk, Aqua, of the Questioners, Mindy, Helen, tigtog, Phillomath
Jo, Helen, Jo, Helen, Aphie, Jo [...]
SunlessNick, Eden, Feminist Avatar, angharad, Jo, tigtog [...]
Helen, Aqua, of the Questioners, Mindy, Rebekka, Aqua, of the Questioners, tigtog [...]
Merryn, Alison
Helen, blue milk, Chris, Tamara, tigtog, Tamara [...]
Aqua, of the Questioners, tigtog, Megpie71, Eden, tigtog, Aqua of the Questioners [...]
tigtog, bluntshovels, Rebekka, Sam Bauers, Sarah, Lauredhel
Mindy, tigtog, Chris, tigtog, Mindy, Chris
Mindy, Mindy, Chally, orlando, Eden, YetAnotherMatt [...]
Aqua of the Questioners, Mindy, lauredhel, Mindy, Aphie, tigtog [...]