Of course you’d rather be poor
August 19, 2010
You would have seen the media coverage about an open letter from 51 ‘economists’ claiming Labor’s stimulus saved Australia from recession.
Has anyone actually looked at the record of these people? The instigator of the letter was Professor Raja Junankar, author of ‘Marx’s economics‘.
Some of the other ‘research’ these ‘economists’ are responsible for includes:
- ‘Is this racism? Representations of South Africa in the Sydney Morning Herald since the inauguration of Thabo Mbeki as president’
- ‘Rethinking left union strategy: Left productivism and the labour process in Australia since the end of cold-war.’
And my favourite:
- ‘Direct and derived policies: illicit drug use and greenhouse gas emissions in Australia’
Yep – I’m glad these people work at taxpayer-funded universities rather than in the real world.
Maybe these economists would welcome the news that Australia is now up there with Venezuela when it comes to sovereign risk and tax rate uncertainty for mining projects. All thanks to Kevin Rudd’s resources tax. Here’s the report released last week by Canada’s Fraser Institute (go to page 18).
And would you be happier if you were poorer? The authors of an influential new book The Spirit Level think so. It’s no surprise the British Labour Party (and some misguided Tories) love it. In the latest IPA Review Julie Novak explains why they’re wrong. And Peter Saunders from the CIS has this on the dodgy statistics behind the book. Here’s a summary of the debate from The Guardian a few days ago.
If you missed the IPA’s Melbourne launch of 100 Great Books of Liberty last Wednesday, you can hear the highlights of the panel discussion with Michael Kroger, Sally Warhaft, and Peter van Onselen from Monday’s Counterpoint on Radio National. Buy the book here.
In The Sunday Age, Chris Berg argued that the Charter of Budget Honesty is useless, in The Drum on Tuesday he said government was stopping broadband. In The Washington Times yesterday, Tim Wilson said that green protectionism will hurt consumers. And on Tuesday, Tim was on SBS’ Insight saying Northern Australia should be a free trade zone.
The August IPA Review is out now. In it Tony Barry discusses the fraud of ‘hope politics‘, Sinclair Davidson explains the financial shambles of out last PM, and Brad Laver reviews Nothing to Envy – the story of North Korea’s totalitarian tragedy.
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