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Keywords: Economist

  • AUSTRALIA

    Economists undaunted by car industry canning

    • Ray Cassin
    • 12 February 2014
    18 Comments

    Malcolm Turnbull assures us that something will come along to fill the gap left by the demise in Australia of Toyota and SPC Ardmona. But new sources of employment do not magically appear because they have been foretold by economic doctrine. Only about a third of those who are about to lose their jobs in car making or food processing are likely to find new jobs on equivalent incomes. Another third will probably never work again.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's political goldfish bowl from the outside

    • Ray Cassin
    • 09 September 2013
    20 Comments

    The Economist's leader writer and other international international observers including Joseph Stiglitz judged that, by most objective measures, Labor's achievements should be preferred to the Coalition's offerings. The big picture went unacknowledged in Australia's dismal, dispiriting election campaign.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hockey and Thatcher's 'no entitlement' is bad economics

    • Michael Mullins
    • 14 May 2012
    15 Comments

    Joe Hockey provoked outrage with his recent suggestion that we should rely on families rather than the state for social welfare. His premise that high social spending leads to debt and decline reflects the GDP fetish of fundamentalist economists that Joseph Stiglitz blames for Europe's current economic problems.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cucumbers and climate change deniers

    • Brian Matthews
    • 08 July 2011
    9 Comments

    European Parliamentarian Francisco Sosa Wagner risked ridicule to defend the honour of cucumbers. He stands in contrast to Christopher Monckton, politician and professional climate change denier who has called Australian economist Ross Garnaut a fascist.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cheap milk, no guilt

    • Michael Mullins
    • 14 March 2011
    31 Comments

    Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has said the 'unsustainable' $1 per litre milk price will force farmers off the land and ruin Australia's dairy industry. Economists ridicule this sentiment. Low milk prices are the market god's gift to consumers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Economists and other prophets

    • Brian Matthews
    • 12 August 2009
    3 Comments

    Economists are often, sometimes spectacularly, wrong. But like all prophets, they are unabashed by and unpunished for abject failures. They pop up from each new set of ruins, surprised yet unrepentant, princes of a plethora of evanescent predictions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Poor nations could lead recovery

    • Michael Mullins
    • 06 April 2009
    1 Comment

    The G20 Summit took first steps towards stimulating the economies of developing countries. The Economist says growth in these nations could rebound quickly, as households are not weighed down by crushing debts typical in America and Europe.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The chuckling economist

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 05 January 2009
    3 Comments

    On the day the markets bled we rushed to hear Stiglitz's diagnosis. The Nobel Laureate used to be Chief Economist of the World Bank, ending his term in fisty cuffs with the IMF and the US over their financial bullying of developing nations. Stiglitz had schadenfreude written all over his face. (October 2008)

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  • ECONOMICS

    The chuckling economist

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 13 October 2008
    16 Comments

    On the day the markets bled we rushed to hear Stiglitz's diagnosis. The Nobel Laureate used to be Chief Economist of the World Bank, ending his term in fisty cuffs with the IMF and the US over their financial bullying of developing nations. Stiglitz had schadenfreude written all over his face.

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  • ECONOMICS

    It's time to ditch GDP

    • John Wicks
    • 23 September 2008
    9 Comments

    The 'trickle down' of wealth proclaimed by neo-liberalism is debatable, and hardships flowing from sub-prime activities descend on the disadvantaged with the finesse of a freight train. Some economists have demanded the GDP measure be replaced by goods and services data that promote the common good.

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  • CONTRIBUTORS

    B.N. Oakman

    • B. N. Oakman
    • 17 May 2007

    B. N. Oakman is an economist whose prize winning poetry and short fiction has appeared in literary magazines, newspapers, anthologies used in schools, and elsewhere.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    If governments won't fix climate change, people power will

    • Inna Tsyrlin
    • 18 September 2006

    A visiting Dutch environmental economist says it may be too late to expect governments to wake up to the dire need to make and implement adequate policies. He says it is time for us to "work on our government", rather than wait for the government to work on us, to change the way we live.

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