TOI quoted Jonathan Katz, chief economist at Leader Capital Markets, as saying that supply bottlenecks contributed to the slowdown, as did a 26% fall in construction investment because of the lack of — get this — Palestinian laborers! Israel is at full employment, given the call-up of reservists into the army, and the labor shortage is also a big drag on the economy.
Neoliberalism is a disguise for what has existed throughout the 19th Century in Australia when people living here were defined as deserving and undeserving. The deserving rich were granted Indigenous land leases the poor were allowed charity as long as they were white and Christian exceptions were even made for some Jews, Muslims, Irish and Catholics but never for blacks. It was a perspective not radically different today.
Neoliberal policies have led to a shift in the Australian welfare state policy agenda favouring the free market, small government, and reduced social expenditure. These policies have resulted in the retrenchment of the welfare state, with the introduction of forms of conditional welfare that require participants to conform to behavioural or attitudinal tests to keep eligibility for certain payments. Consequently, even individuals with a university degree now struggle to secure full-time employment.
Because they are so low-paid, and mainly part-time, these people account for only about 11 per cent of the nation’s total wage bill. So, as the commission says, the pay rise ‘‘will make only a modest contribution to total wages growth in 2023-24 and will consequently not cause or contribute to any wage-spiral’’.
But that’s not the impression you’d get from all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the main employer group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It claims ‘‘an arbitrary increase of this magnitude consigns Australia to high inflation, mounting interest rates and fewer jobs’’.
But perhaps the main reason for the public’s amnesia is that Democrats in the US and Labor in the UK have failed to offer what should be the obvious alternative: A bottom-up economics that invests in the education and health of the public, and the infrastructure connecting them. This is the only true path to higher productivity and widely-shared prosperity.
Liz Truss’s government will not last a year, and the Conservative Party may then split, leading to an early election (due anyway by 2024). The Labour party is already seventeen points ahead in the polls, and its lead may even widen. It will be a wild ride, but the next British government will be led by Labour, which will rapidly reverse everything that Truss aspires to do.
Dutton wants to focus on the Culture Wars I wonder Why?
The latest official data on Australia’s economy reveals serious structural problems making all workers poorer.
Chalmers’ challenge
The Treasurer will hand down a detailed federal budget next month which will reveal his intended strategies and expected outcomes. His priority must be to rectify wages, reform the tax system and shift the share of the nation’s booming revenues back into a fair balance. This may take some years to accomplish fully. If he can get started in October, we will all be very “reasured”.
“(The system) is just not delivering that strong responsible sustainable wages growth that we need to see, which has been absent from our economy for the best of the decade,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.“
We’re not naive about this issue being contentious.”
Dr Chalmers said working Australians had gone backwards under the current enterprise bargaining system while businesses were recording large profits.
Recently released Australian Bureau of Statistics data for the June quarter showed pay packets were falling behind the rising cost of living.
The business community has broadly opposed the multi-employer bargaining proposal.
Most Australians at this point would not realise what damage the varroa mite can do. But in 2000 in New Zealand, a varroa mite outbreak led to 90% of bees being killed which almost destroyed the industry. And if that were to happen in Australia it would cause $billion in damage to Australia’s agriculture industry which relies on bees for pollination.
Inflation is now at a 40-year high after the consumer prices index rose to 9 per cent in April, according to the latest ONS figures. That’s the sharpest jump since 1982, which, as Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation pointed out, means much of the country has never experienced an inflationary shock of this ferocity “in their working lives”.
It’s time the workers united again to claim their share of the profits their labour produces. Companies should fulfil their part of the social contract by paying fair wages and taxation. With 12% of Australians living in poverty, it’s time we had a government that puts the welfare of its people first. It’s time.
All sides of politics, wary of becoming wedged into electorally damaging positions, avoid confronting these challenges. Emollient slogans – ‘we are in good place’ or ‘push through’ – cannot address these problems. These issues vital to Australia’s future may not even make it onto the election policy agenda.
Australians are getting a stark reminder about how value is actually created in an economy, and how supply chains truly work. Ask chief executives where value comes from and they will credit their own smart decisions that inflate shareholder wealth. Ask logistics experts how supply chains work and they will wax eloquent about ports, terminals and trucks. Politicians, meanwhile, highlight nebulous intangibles like “investor confidence” – enhanced, presumably, by their own steady hands on the tiller. The reality of value-added production and supply is much more human than all of this. It is people who are the driving force behind production, distribution and supply. Labour – human beings getting out of bed and going to work, using their brains and brawn to produce actual goods and services – is the only thing that adds value to the “free gifts” we harvest from nature. It’s the only thing that puts food on supermarket shelves, cares for sick people and teaches our children.
Extraordinary details have emerged of how the Reserve Bank intervened to stop Treasurer Josh Frydenberg crashing the economy as the pandemic took grip, how, contrary to their fable of “superior economic management”, the Morrison Coalition pursued political gain over good government, and how they have been borrowing its billions almost for free. Investigation by Michael West and @13foot7.
Morrison and Frydenberg paint themselves as being the world’s “greatest” survivors? When we are running 8th out of the pacific nations this year and predicted to be 7th in 2022 according to the IMF. That’s last out of actual Pacific nations in 21 and second last in 22. Why don’t we see these statistical hard facts on the front pages of our main stream media? Why are we treated like mushrooms?
Despite successfully containing COVID-19 in 2020, some economies in the region, including Australia, faced setbacks from an initially slow vaccination rollout, the IMF says in its regional economic outlook.
In many ways, Biden’s plan will improve the lives of the bottom 90 percent of Americans – people who don’t have much wealth and own almost no shares of stock. This is something the corporate backers of Republicans and conservative Democrats don’t seem to care about, but they should. What do you think?
Virtually every new data release confirms Australia’s economic demise under Prime Minister Morrison and Treasurer Frydenberg. Alan Austin updates the tally of disastrous outcomes.
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT IS at an all-time low. As is Australia’s net worth and its global ranking on economic growth. Tax-free corporate profits are at an all-time high.
To strengthen workers’ collective bargaining rights, the Biden administration looks poised to recommend a host of modest reforms to existing programs and policies. But the working class will remain disempowered unless it organizes itself on a mass scale.
Australia’s economy will limp along after recovering from the pandemic, failing to regain the growth it had either in the years leading up to the crisis or the much higher growth in the decades before.
A study of 45 countries shows those who have contained the virus also tend to have less severe economic impacts than those that haven’t. Saving the economy does not mean sacrificing lives, writes Michael Smithson. Containing Covid versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy.
ECONOMISTS WORLDWIDE are watching the extraordinary collapse of what was until recently a seemingly indestructible economy. The United States still has the world’s largest economy measured by gross domestic product (GDP). But among developed nations, it is now at or close to the bottom on most rankings of economic health.
He spent $600,000 creating a job. giving the money to Corporations
The Victorian Premier has become the biggest challenger to Morrison’s agenda in a national debate over the pandemic. While Andrews puts a priority on shutdowns in the name of saving lives, Morrison puts a premium on opening up the economy.
Australia will suffer its first reversal in net migration in more than seven decades in a hit to growth to be revealed in next week’s federal budget, as the pandemic also cuts the nation’s birth rate. With thousands of people leaving the country and fewer returning, the net result will be negative for the first time since 1946 and the country is at risk of a population slump not seen since the Great Depression.
Despite the slagging off at Labor by the Coalition, simply because of debts accrued to maintain the economy through an unexpected crisis – namely the GFC – the Coalition now finds itself in the same situation through COVID-19, and has to go down a similar path. Have they done as well as Labor did? NO! Why not?
The process of shifting wealth and income from the poor and middle to the rich continues apace. Alan Austin examines the latest national accounts. FOR THE FIRST TIME since 1959, when Australia first published detailed national accounts, the share of all income going to corporations has risen above 30%. Simultaneously, the share for employees has fallen below 50% for the first time ever.
a familiar talking point for Trump, who returns often to the theme of how much he juiced “the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history, the best.” Donald Trump’s economic record is not as stellar as he would have you believe. Donald Trump’s economic record is not as stellar as he would have you believe.Credit:AP None of those historical claims are true. In his first three years, he wrought slightly less employment growth than his predecessor did, the same gross domestic product growth, slightly better stockmarket growth and the same wage growth. Before the pandemic, Trump’s economic record was unremarkable for a 21st-century president, even though he was able to enact a large amount of the agenda he ran on in 2016, and even though he enjoyed what by one measure was more supportive policy from Congress and the Federal Reserve than any president in a generation.
Jonah is at home on the SS Florida the Whale is waitng in antcipation (ODT)
Florida accounts for 10 percent of the country’s COVID-19 cases, with almost half a million cases and already 7,021 deaths. Fifty-one hospitals have run out of ICU beds as the state still is adding another 9,725 new cases on average a day. The hurricane has only contributed more chaos to the equation. State-run coronavirus testing sites have closed on Florida’s eastern coast in anticipation of the storm (originally, the state considered consider closing all of its testing sites before Isaias changed tracks). And hospitals also must plan for the worst. Florida Governor Ron De Santis said he doesn’t “anticipate hospitals needing to evacuate patients.” But one small hospital in Brevard County, which is in the anticipated path of the storm, already has moved its COVID-19 patients. The state has had to stockpile supplies in preparation, including 20 million masks, 22 million gloves, 10 million gowns, 1.6 million face shields, 270,000 coveralls and 20,000 thermometers, while ensuring there are generators for nursing facilities should the power go out.
Covid-19: sacrificing lives does not mean saving the economy – Michael West
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