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Keywords: David James

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ECONOMICS

    It's the end of 'industry as usual', so what next?

    • David James
    • 22 November 2019
    5 Comments

    At the next global financial crisis, when questions about what we want our monetary system to do for us become a matter of survival, why not devise a transactional system that is not just geared towards the consumption of goods and services, but involves monetary exchanges for social goods, such as sustainable production, or civic benefit?

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  • ECONOMICS

    Ways out of the capitalist rabbit hole

    • David James
    • 21 October 2019
    5 Comments

    Recognising that financial systems are a human creation rather than natural systems governed by 'capital flows' would be an important step to conceiving a more robust and equitable system. To ask what kind of society we want and only then work out what we want money to do for us is to put the horse back in front of the cart.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Capitalism isn’t dead, it just smells funny

    • David James
    • 24 September 2019
    9 Comments

    It is easy to blame the financial sector — and the governments that were supposed to oversee the financial system but instead just washed their hands of it — for creating this global debt debauch. They certainly bear much of the responsibility. But in many ways the financial misbehaviour is as much symptom as cause.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The 'kettle logic' of climate denial cultists

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 19 September 2019
    13 Comments

    Like the flying saucer people documented in When Prophecy Fails, they don't change their minds based on new material. Rather, the discomfort fresh edvidence causes them results in a renewed proclamation of their denialism, as they double down on that identity. The rhetoric might change but the structure remains the same.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Inside US and China's dodgy economies

    • David James
    • 07 September 2019
    6 Comments

    One of the ironies of the intensifying tariff war between America and China is that that neither of the two giants seems to have a viable economic model. Both countries' systems are based on dodgy financial engineering and printing money, or just inventing new types of money out of thin air.

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  • MEDIA

    The creators of fake news are winning

    • David James
    • 30 July 2019
    12 Comments

    They vastly outnumber journalists, their industry is far bigger than the shrinking media organisations, and the concentration of media ownership means that they can do deals with proprietors. Understanding that the trail with fake news leads to the spin doctors can be a useful way to detect what is, and is not, propaganda.

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  • ECONOMICS

    NZ's riposte to modern economic myths

    • David James
    • 02 July 2019
    5 Comments

    While money can be transacted for things that are bad — air pollution, road deaths, cigarette ads — as long as more transactions occur, it creates the illusion the economy is growing, which, ipso facto, is good. Thus, Japan's GDP rose sharply after the tsunami disaster. New Zealand's initiative will track better what is really happening in the country.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Lines drawn for Trump's economic war

    • David James
    • 07 June 2019
    5 Comments

    The globe is being split into two, with Australia nervously sitting between the two sides: America and China. At least we have a trade deficit with America so are not an immediate target. But we might want to consider becoming more self-sufficient and broadening our industrial base.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Could Labor fuel a property revolution?

    • David James
    • 07 May 2019
    5 Comments

    The Australian economy rests on a decades-long property gamble that has disenfranchised younger generations. It is why the differing policies of the two major parties at the federal election take on an unusual significance. The voters' choice will go a long way towards determining if that generational split will get better or worse.

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  • EDUCATION

    Business thinking is death to the humanities

    • David James
    • 16 April 2019
    25 Comments

    Here's a suggestion. In order to halt the seemingly inexorable destruction of the humanities in our secondary schools, we should immediately sack any senior Education Department bureaucrat who has an MBA. Or perhaps they can be forced to reapply, unsuccessfully, for their old jobs. They like that kind of thing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump's new Cold War

    • David James
    • 09 March 2019
    7 Comments

    It has been postulated that there are three types of war: kinetic, informational and economic. America has been losing its kinetic conflicts in the Middle East and recently has escalated its informational war. The favoured weapon with economic warfare is sanctions, and Trump has started to use them to an extreme degree.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reckoning is due after Afghanistan endgame

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 31 January 2019
    18 Comments

    John Howard promised to 'stay the course' in Afghanistan. So too did Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. So complete was the political consensus that parliament didn't even debate the Afghan intervention until nine years after it began. Now that there's no longer a course on which to stay, we're due some accountability.

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