Why aren’t priced falling they would if Corporations were socially responsible
Whether eggs, flour, or baby formula, the household goods that have seen some of the steepest price increases and majorly squeezed average Americans have also made their manufacturers incredible amounts of profit.
Pressure is growing for Labor to abandon the third stage of the tax cuts, due in 2024, because of pressure on the Budget. The tax cuts overwhelmingly favour high-income earning men and are a piece with the tilt against ordinary workers under the Morrison government, writes Alan Austin.
Inflation isn’t problem for all Australians the widening wealth and income gap is
The average income across the nation’s richest postcode soared beyond $300,000 for the first time as residents of Cottesloe and Peppermint Grove in Perth’s western suburbs enjoyed an 81 per cent increase in earnings – and during a recession.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell plans to address sky-high inflation by hiking interest rates — acknowledging that doing so will suppress wages and worker power. It’s a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the inflation crisis.
In the final analysis the economy makes so much wealth; and the question is one of distribution, as well as higher productivity; and industry policy encouraging high wage industries. Increasing the size of the cake is good – but does not solve all problems. At some point we need to confront the question of who gets what share of the cake; and this will require redistribution. Sometimes it’s possible to have ‘win-win’ – but not always. We cannot become a US style economy where workers are disciplined by fear of destitution; and where the living standards of a so-called ‘middle-class’ depend on the exploitation of the working poor.
Australia’s recovery is leading the world? Biggest economic shock since the Depression? There used to be a rule against misleading Parliament. No longer, it seems, writes Alan Austin. This is almost certainly the most corrupt budget process Australia has endured in living memory. Its deceptions and contradictions are found throughout the budget documents and the Treasurer’s presentations. The glaring falsehoods
Looking at America through the lens of the stock market not only is useless in forecasting major moves in the market itself it also blinds us to the conditions most citizens experience in their daily work and home lives. In any case as even most CNBC anchors remind us the stock market is not the economy. Some like to joke that
Paul Keating was on Fran Kelly’s ABC radio show on Friday. He’d picked up a peculiar thing from the GDP release. The headline number was horrific. Australia’s economic growth had shrunk by 7%, the largest drop on record, wiping out four years of growth and sinking the nation, officially, into its first recession in 29 years. Keating seized on the bright spot though, or at least what he thought was a bright spot. Buried in the National Accounts data and apparently picked up by nobody, yet, were the figures for GDP per hour worked. It was an increase. Yes, an increase, and not a trifling increase either. Growth in GDP per hour worked was up from 0.6% – the average over four previous quarters – to 4.1%. It represents a fantastical rise in productivity – a seven-fold surge in productivity. Businesses have shed millions of workers so wage costs plummeted by 9.3% and wages are usually the highest cost in a business.
Global banks were supposed to be bullet-proof after boosting capital ratios but the regulatory buffers were never stress-tested for such a shock. They risk becoming the “amplifier” of the downturn as rising bad loans force them to pull back, starving the real economy of credit.
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A cyclist wearing a protective face mask as a precaution against the coronavirus moves past the Rocky statue outfitted with mock surgical face mask at the Philadelphia Art Museum in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Coronavirus pandemic
As the day unfolded: Scott Morrison says COVID-19 restrictions could be lifted in four weeks, global cases surpass 2 million, Australian death toll stands at 63
Even if the worst is avoided and there is no secondary financial crisis, there will not be a swift return to normal. Mohamed El-Erian from Allianz said the rescue measures offer liquidity but cannot prevent the slow burn of defaults. Nor can they kick start the economy when companies refuse to invest because they have no idea what is going to happen.
The Economy is a system of institutionalised patterns of behaviours that have changed over the years. This pandemic has brought out its current inability to serve all Australians and is in need of serious change. People have always been sacrificed for “the economy” it’s time the economy was sacrificed to accommodate all Australians so death isn’t structured to simply serve it. The economy isn’t an Aztec God. The Aged, immune-deficient, Indigenous, homeless addicted and poor aren’t simply expendables. All parents would sacrifice themselves for the children’s future if given the choice. However, all parents don’t have that privilege some are simply systematically made to. America is finding that COVID-19 is shining a light on their Racism. 40% of deaths are Afro-American in areas where they are only 20% of the population. Equality is the myth, the economy its agent of death. (ODT)
ALL THE WAY WITH DONALD J SAY MORRISON ECONOMIC MANAGER
Australian two-way trade with China in 2017-2018 was 24.4% ($194.6 billion) of total trade. In contrast, Japan was our second largest trading partner, accounting for 9.7% ($77.6 billion). China was Australia’s largest export destination — with about 27% of all exports, valued at $123.3 billion.
If Australia were a business, it would be marked down for its high risk-profile through its inordinate reliance on one customer — known in economics as monopsony.
In terms of reliance on China, Australia places 11th on the league table, ahead of such “stand-out” economies as North Korea, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Solomon Islands, Eritrea, Angola, Oman, Myanmar, Mauritania and the Republic of Congo, according to the CIA World Handbook.
The only other significant nation that comes close to Australia’s 27% export figure is South Korea (25%). New Zealand is at (19%), Singapore (12%) and Indonesia (11%). Trading figures fall away after this.
Australia’s jobless rate of 5.24 per cent now ranks 75th in the world and 19th in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s the club of 36 wealthy, developed mixed capitalist economies with which comparisons can and should be made.
That is the lowest Australia has ranked since records have been kept. In June 2012 and June 2013, Australia ranked eighth. Just 12 months ago, Australia ranked 17th.
Corporate America brought $US664.9 billion ($938.3 billion) of offshore profits back to the US last year, falling short of the $US4 trillion ($5.64 trillion) President Donald Trump said would return as a result of the 2017 tax overhaul.
Conditions aren’t being helped by the crude trade policies being pursued by the US, which are damaging its major trading partners with flow-on effects to the rest of the world, while hurting segments of its own economy in the process.
Donald Trump’s unconventional trade negotiations are having a detrimental effect on US economic conditions.Credit:AP
The Fed has now backed off on its attempt to use what had been benign conditions in the US – where the economy was growing strongly, if perhaps unsustainably, in response to the debt-funded Trump tax cuts and spending – to normalise its policies.
According to those environmental planners, shading from strategically placed street trees can lower surrounding temperatures by up to 6 degrees – or up to 20 degrees over roads. Green roofs and walls can naturally cool buildings, substantially lowering demand for air-conditioning.
By contrast, hard surfaces – including concrete, asphalt and stone – increase urban temperature by absorbing heat and radiating it back into the air.
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Why plantscrapers are springing up across the globe
Good Weekend
Why plantscrapers are springing up across the globe
But though scientists have much evidence that trees and other greenery improve our mood and health, they know less about the actual mechanisms by which this occurs. Japanese research, however, suggests that when we walk through bushland we breathe in three substances: beneficial bacteria, plant-derived essential oils and negatively-charged ions.
We live our lives surrounded by beneficial bacteria, breathing them in and sharing our bodies with them. Gut-dwelling bacteria break down the food we can’t digest and produce substances that benefit us physically and mentally.
LNP money management theory PRIVATISE. Driving Australia to the edge of a cliff.(ODT)
Surely there is a point where the contractor performing the ‘government’ work has to charge more than it would cost the government to perform the work themselves. But by the time that occurs, the government has deliberately deskilled itself to the level where it can’t make the correct call and take back the service provision, so it has to pay.
Global warming and its resultant climate change is no longer a theory.
It is a stark reality, as even a casual reader must grasp:
“Investors are now beginning to worry that this heated rhetoric is something that will last for a while and could actually lead to disruption of trade,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York.
State subsidies to promote home ownership is not always a good thing – it hikes public debt, cuts labour mobility and often boosts prices not ownership levels
Consumer confidence in the Australian housing market has collapsed to its lowest level in 27 years, with the proportion of Australians believing real estate was the wisest place to put savings falling to below 12 per cent, the lowest level since 1974.
Joe Hockey infamously labelled us all as “lifters or leaners”, he just mixed the labels up. The conservative government has decided it is the poor who will do all the heavy lifting when it comes to budget repair and paying for their obscene defence spending and tax cuts to the wealthy. First up they got…
If economists do one day possess an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style Terminator, capable of travelling back in time to alter the future, Australia Day 2017 is shaping up as a pretty good day to pick.
The Treasury’s Debt Management Office this morning sold debt at a new record low interest rate, underlining the massive appetite from investors for British Government bonds in the wake of the Brexit vote and sparking fresh calls for the Chancellor to take advantage by ramping up its infrastructure investment. The DMO sold £850m of an index-linked Gilt (or bond) that matures in 2036 at a yield of minus 1.72 per cent.
By Arthur Plottier This week we have in the news the ‘The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey‘ (the HILDA report) and it does not paint a healthy picture. Despite our recent natural resources boom we are going backwards. Some of the findings in the report are: Households headed by a person aged…
One of Australia’s most respected public policy think-tanks says ‘negative gearing’ does not benefit everyday Australians in the way its proponents suggest.
Consumer confidence in the Australian housing market has collapsed to its lowest level in 27 years, with the proportion of Australians believing real estate was the wisest place to put savings falling to below 12 per cent, the lowest level since 1974.
If economists do one day possess an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style Terminator, capable of travelling back in time to alter the future, Australia Day 2017 is shaping up as a pretty good day to pick.
By Arthur Plottier This week we have in the news the ‘The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey‘ (the HILDA report) and it does not paint a healthy picture. Despite our recent natural resources boom we are going backwards. Some of the findings in the report are: Households headed by a person aged…
Economic growth is tearing the planet apart, and new research suggests that it can’t be reconciled with sustainability
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