MCJ Posted on Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:22 If you were hoping for some policy debate in federal politics last week, you were wasting your time. Our federal politicians were operating in a content-free zone, with nary the shadow of an intellectual framework in sight.
MCJ Posted on Friday, February 25, 2011 at 14:11
Updated on Friday, March 4, 2011 at 20:44 by
MCJ
So, I work as an environmental economist, right? I vote for The Greens, cycle everywhere, buy organic food, turn all my appliances off when I’m not using them, reuse my shower water, and generally try to follow the reduce/reuse/recycle motto. But, since 2006, I’ve flown from Australia to Germany (and back), between Germany and London several times, and between Melbourne and Sydney even more often. Oh, and driven Melbourne-Sydney and back. Against all those emissions (particularly the Australia-Germany flights), the marginal changes I’ve made to my life are paltry.
MCJ Posted on Monday, September 13, 2010 at 19:17 In an short piece entitle “Pitfalls of Passion” in the August 29 issue of “Sunday Life”, Bella Ellwood-Clayton writes that “[t]he type of love Westerners chase doesn’t, by and large, last. Arranged marriages, on the other hand, have a global divorce rate of about four per cent compared to Australian, American and Canadian figures, which place us at about the 40% figure. So what do do countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India – where most marriages are arranged – know that we don’t?”
This statistic is not only rubbish, it is insults (through ignorance) the plight of those women who are forced into arranged marriages.
MCJ Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 at 22:28 Whadaya reckon about this whole Dick Smith $1m prize thing? He seems to be after a practical strategy for decoupling economic and physical growth. It’s not like people haven’t been thinking about that already. What are your thoughts?
I see three questions:
1) Do I agree with Smith’s premise?
2) Do I agree with his goal?
3) Do I agree with his methodology of achieving that goal?
MCJ Posted on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 13:01 I was recently asked to comment on an article in The Age by Michael Gilding, entitled “More tax dollars and less mining? That’s a win-win situation”. Here is my response:
Short version: Gilding identifies several problems for which a reduction in mining – though it might help – is the wrong solution.
Longer, point by point version:
Gilding’s first argument, that “mining sucks oxygen (capital investment) from the rest of the economy”, is one I can’t support. The reason is that a basic tenet of economics is that people (the market) make their own best decisions – in this case, investing in mining rather than, say, toll roads. The first rule of taxation is therefore that it distorts private decision-making as little as possible, which makes justifying a mining tax on the grounds that it distorts decisions problematic. (The RSPT, I note, was lauded precisely for NOT distorting investment decisions.)
MCJ Posted on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 13:10
Updated on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 23:03 by
MCJ
Since the Australian Government announced its Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT) recently, based on one of the recommendations of the “Australia’s Future Tax System” review (colloquially known as the “Henry review”, after the head of Treasury, Dr. Ken Henry), it’s become a big topic of discussion. Having had a chance to look at the actual proposal, I feel that much of the mainstream media coverage (including the Government’s attempts to “sell” the tax) has been pretty poor, and am going to have a crack at explaining it:
Underpinning the tax is idea of what we’re taxing: natural resources (i.e. minerals). These natural resources have the characteristic that they are non-renewable – once they’ve been dug up and sold, they’re gone for good. This is quite different to most things produced in Australia, which are goods or services that to a greater (services) or lesser (some goods) extent can be produced again, and again, and again. You can milk a cow today, and milk it again tomorrow; milking it today does “rob” future generations. However, if we mine something today, we can’t mine it again tomorrow: the resource is gone.
Further, natural resources aren’t private. They aren’t skills someone has learnt; they aren’t objects someone has bought or created. They are parts of our country, and as such belong to all Australian citizens. As the Government says (PDF, 372 KB), “If the community undercharges for the use of their non‐renewable resources, it is akin to under‐pricing the sale of a public asset.”
