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Keywords: Economist

  • AUSTRALIA

    Priced out of parenthood: How Australia's housing crisis is lowering the birthrate

    • David James
    • 24 October 2024

    Soaring property prices and declining fertility rates are entwined in a feedback loop, threatening long-term economic stagnation. As younger Australians are priced out of the market, many are delaying or forgoing parenthood, leading to an increasingly divided and unsustainable society.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The two American freedoms

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 21 August 2024

    For a nation ‘conceived in liberty’, much of how this U.S. election will play out will hinge on different understandings of the word ‘freedom’, a term that has two distinct and separate meanings depending on whether the person you’re asking votes red or blue.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Surge in protectionism creates new era of global trade

    • David James
    • 06 August 2024

    In a world increasingly divided by geopolitical tensions, a new wave of protectionism is reshaping global trade. As nations turn inward, once-dominant economic models are being dismantled and new strategies are emerging. Is Australia prepared?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Productivity Commission's magical thinking

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 25 July 2024

    While proposing broader access to tax deductibility for some charities, the Productivity Commission's new report on charitable giving suggests removing benefits for religious entities. This raises serious questions about the role of religion in fostering charitable giving and the potential consequences of these reforms for Australia's charitable landscape.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Budget balancing act fails working poor

    • David Halliday
    • 23 May 2024

    In light of the gains made in lifting people out of poverty during the pandemic, it seems critics are justified in viewing this year’s budget with more than a little disappointment. I wonder, when it comes to the federal budget, who are we trying to serve?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's dysfunctional housing quagmire

    • Peter Mares
    • 12 April 2024
    1 Comment

    The ABC’s recent Q+A housing special left many questions unasked and unanswered. Labor, Coalition and Green MPs all say they want more people to be able to buy their own homes. The most obvious way to achieve that would be to reduce the price of housing. Yet no politician will make that an explicit policy aim.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Review: The Shortest History of Economics

    • David James
    • 22 March 2024

    Economics may be useless for forecasting, and its assertions can be overly simplistic. But it is a language that should be understood, and here is a good place to start. In simple and clear prose, Leigh spans the history of human economic activity, beginning in prehistoric times and ending with the modern day.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The economy is in worse shape than you think

    • David James
    • 07 March 2024
    4 Comments

    The aggregate picture of the economy may seem healthy enough after two years of heavy immigration, over 800,000, and the return of students and tourists. But the elephant in the room remains. Australia is a two-tiered society sharply divided between people who own homes and people who do not. The generational divide is worsening.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need a real conversation about tax reform

    • Joe Zabar
    • 12 February 2024
    1 Comment

    Much of the discussion about tax reform is about the mechanisms of collection; around changes to things like negative gearing, stamp duty, land tax, capital gains tax, and superannuation. But what is missing is a statement of values about what we expect our tax system to fund.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    When history becomes myth and memory is lost

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 16 January 2024
    4 Comments

    In a recent survey of young Americans, 20 per cent of respondents, aged from 18 to 29, thought that the Holocaust was a myth. If knowledge of history fades into the mist, the space will be filled with ignorance, and worse, wilful malice. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Forgive us our debts

    • David James
    • 23 November 2023

    If money is just a set of rules, we need to ask, how can these rules best serve society and not cause crises? We know, after thousands of years of evidence, that the debt-based system of money eventually self-destructs, and this time, the effects are likely to be felt around the world. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    HAFFing and puffing

    • Peter Mares
    • 21 September 2023
    2 Comments

    Will the Housing Australia Future Fund make a dent on Australia’s housing crisis? After a political tug-of-war, the government's ambitious $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) has passed parliament, promising tens of thousands of new homes. But with over 170,000 households on social housing waiting lists and a skyrocketing rental market, the question remains: is the HAFF enough?

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