The proposition that “the time for new ideas has arrived“, is highlighted by the Federal Coalition Government, now advocating deficit spending to achieve higher economic activity and ultimately employment. They are even asserting higher employment is required to lift wages, yet they have been through time, perhaps the most vociferous advocates of austerity and wage deflation.
In the mid 1990’s I began a conversation with a local farmer who was also a very qualified economist. We were emerging from a time of very high unemployment, near 11 percent. For a community which believed that “all who wanted to work should be able to find a job” it was somewhat confrontational.
That the ALP government of the day, were delivering this outcome, was most galling. My economist friend (Ben Rees) was horrified; we were failing to manage our economy to obtain what he felt were not only the optimum theoretical outcomes, but outcomes crucial to the welfare of our community and nation. He was not alone of course and history now shows the chief advocates of this change were not only domestic, but strode the globe from Mont Pelerin to Chicago and into the politics of not only of Australia, but much of the Western world, Great Britain, US, and NZ.
Right or wrong we were entering a new window of history. For some like the dairy industry in Australia, the world would never be the same again. Most people would agree that the utopia of a market based system providing a fair return for our dairy farmers completely failed to eventuate, not even in the long term. Keynes was correct, many are dead.
At the end of the day it’s the welfare of our entire community that is at stake, not one little corner, yet to deliver some semblance of equity every corner counts.
On that matter, employment and income distribution are critical components of a just community. Not only does it satisfy the moral dimension, but also the economy cannot function at full output or full efficiency with a pool of unemployed. The imperative to change has a moral and financial dimension.
Economic efficiency is damaged, as are human outcomes.
Below is Report 933, a paper by Economist Ben Rees, which offers real choices and a process to calculate the path toward for what I believe would be far better and more equitable outcomes for us all.
Click on the report 933 below to open it as a PDF.
About Rowell Walton
The Making of History
I am a recent user of Twitter, and I have enjoyed the discourse therein, I noted the ABC radio announcer Steve Austin had made a comment about an article; it was rather strong for Steve I thought. That article written by Rutger Bregman; https://thecorrespondent.com/466/the-neoliberal-era-is-ending-what-comes-next/61655148676-a00ee89a carefully articulates the back-story of government changed, and we saw the
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Toward a Stable Farm Sector – Multi Peril Insurance
Farmers First began life with the intention of facilitating the delivery of a Multi Peril Insurance product for the cropping sector around Australia, and once bedded down, rolling it out to other cropping and then livestock industries. Most of the rest of the developed and even developing world has this insurance cover, and in many
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Covid-19 Structural Reform Debate
Economist Ben Rees from Queensland has advanced the debate about the post Covid-19 Australian Economy. His paper provides a disturbing graph showing underutilisation of workers through time, effectively making the point that the underutilisation rate confirms terrible inefficient use of Australian Labour. The strongest point to take from Bens work is his empirical record of
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