Anthony Albanese’s Self-Imposed Constraints.

Given the news, it’s hard for an environmentally-conscious socialist worker to focus on a single topic.

Think about it. Should I focus on the catastrophic drought, heat wave and/or wildfires afflicting Europe, north Africa and Asia? What about the megadrought that left Lake Mead dry? Should I focus on it, instead?

(source)

Or, rather, should I report on the unprecedented rainfall – and unusual snowfall – in southeastern Australia?

(source)

Some parts, registered four major flooding events since March:

Productivity.

The Tailor of Folk Suits. [A]

Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker. – Paul Krugman.

It’s an election campaign and pollies are not debating productivity. Imagine that.

Well, they aren’t debating many things. For example, last year, by this time, all the talk was COVID. Today? Not a peep. More importantly, climate change is at best an afterthought.

 

But it’s productivity that the economically-minded Very Serious People, like Laura Tingle, have in mind as the most important thing ever:

The good news is that growth and employment are strong. The bad news is inflation and interest rates are rising and are going to keep rising and wages are only just starting to pick up. That brings us back to one of those issues we just aren’t talking about in this election.

Which is? Cut to Danielle Wood, CEO of the Grattan Institute:

If we’re serious about getting real wages growth for the longer term, we really need to be talking about productivity and that is actually something that’s been missing from this election campaign.

Has Scott Morrison Lost his Mind?

(source)

Truly, I am at a loss for words. Have a good look at the composite above. You see the little boy playing with a toy forklift? Charming, isn’t it?

Would you believe me if I told you that that’s how Scotty from Marketing thought he could solve the supply chain problems crippling the Australian economy?

Nah, you say. I’m exaggerating. I’m going bananas, right?

ACTU Statement on RATs and Masks.

 

[A]

Comrade Sally McManus, ACTU Secretary, sent us an email today. It’s at the bottom of this post. I fully support it. Before reading it, let me give you my own views on the matter.

Faced with a COVID outbreak of his own creation, Scott Morrison once again wants essential workers to risk their health so that society does not grind to a halt. He is right on something: we (not himself, not business people, not CEOs, not shareholders, not professors of philosophy or history or economics) are essential. We, with all our faults and weaknesses, but also with all our strength.

(If you are interested: a list of those included in that essential We.)

The Morrison Wave: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi.

To describe in words the situation Australia is facing would be long. The health system is verging on collapse. Supply chains aren't in much better shape. Supermarket and pharmacy shelves aren't refilled. My gut feeling is that we might be about to face an economic contraction.

The chart opening does not fully convey the magnitude of the disaster Scotty from Marketing and Dominic Perrottet created either. But it does go a long way: those two blokes proved that Australia can indeed punch above its weight. We're number one among rich nations.

That's how the "let it rip" strategy looks like.

The Morrison Wave (Updated).

Courtesy of ABC Online, this is how the COVID pandemic has evolved in Australia since March 2020:

A view of the same data starting now on Dec 1st:

Happy New Year, folks!

The COALition’s Latest Stuff-Up.

(source)

It may be less virulent, but Omicron seems poised to deliver a KO punch to the Australian health service. People are queuing for hours to get the PCR tests; it takes up to five and six days to receive the bloody result and when it comes it’s often mistaken.

Pathology services and hospitals, facing a surge in COVID cases, are running understaffed. This is no doubt a surprise to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Scotty from Marketing, but it turns out that lab technicians, data entry operators, contact tracers, nurses, and doctors also get sick and yet are forced to deal with an avalanche of COVID. That’s when mistakes are made.

In Their Own Words.

 

“We are not lunatic fringe, we are pretty conservative, deeply thinking people,” said the founder of a Fitzroy North school (Melbourne) where a COVID19 outbreak started.

As of yesterday, the resulting outbreak had already affected 31 persons (including four parents and three school staff), 20 of them children. The school encouraged parents sent their kids to school, apparently against official guidelines. See here.

That is a belief plenty people seems to subscribe to: conservatism = deep thought. It is just a step removed from the “sensible middle-ground” commonplace.

You have to love the self-flattering irony.

Nothing New Under the Sun (Updated).

 

 
Maybe things are different elsewhere, but in Australia you can hardly read the news or watch TV news reports without hearing about how hard it is for local businesses to recruit staff. And you hear those tales of woe whether unemployment is high or low, in good or in bad times.

After a while, if one pays attention, one realises that kind of story seems to follow a template or a script.

Where all Aussie Talking Heads go to Die.

Australian housing is the subject confounding all and sundry would-be economic prophets, particularly those presenting themselves as mavericks. And after the GFC the population of econo-mavericks exploded.

The prototype of that creature would be Steve Keen, the wannabe-Copernicus cum Chicken Little old bloke whose repeated and repeatedly failed prophecies of housing market doom inspired countless jokes.

There are other, however, less known examples. Say, the Unconventional Economist (aka Leith van Onselen) and the Macrobusiness crew.

Follow the Experts’ Advice, David Lipson.

What is it we’ve been told endlessly before reporting sensational news? Why, that we need to make sure we get the facts straight, before reporting them.

David Lipson and a team of ABC journos have been reporting from the US. So far, I’m satisfied – as I’m sure the wider Australian public is – they’ve done a good job, under difficult circumstances. ABC journos have a well-earned reputation for that.

Having said that, Lipson’s latest op-ed/analysis (“Donald Trump’s Current Strategy isn’t About Winning in Court. It’s about Disrupting the Process in the Hope of Winning the US Election by Default”, November 20) contained this bit:

(source)

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce?

(source)

November 2008, Barack H. Obama II was elected POTUS, amidst enormous popular good will. The first black American elected to that office, Obama inherited the top job as the United States was experiencing the first stages of the Great Recession (or Second Great Depression, depending on your perspective).

Can we Trust the Public Service? (Updated)

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon – Matthew 6:24, KJV

In representative liberal democracies, educational/professional qualifications are not required of candidates to public office. Take an aspirant to the Prime Ministership or the Presidency. There are neither schools offering “Prime Minister 101” courses nor licensing requirements, as there are for would-be plumbers or lawyers.

Sometimes candidates may have somewhat related experience: say, a former state Premier could wind up in the top job. But generally that experience is neither fully compatible (say, a Premier must prioritise public health, a PM focuses on the economy) nor, as far as I can tell, is that the usual situation (how many premiers do you know went on to become PMs?).

In countries under a parliamentary system, unlike those under a presidential system, that extends to Cabinet members: health ministers don’t need to be doctors, say.

That’s why the public service is important: public servants are supposed to provide the expertise their political masters lack. (No doubt readers have heard about the “checks and balances” included in the institutional design of liberal democracies to prevent dysfunction. Arguably, the bureaucracy is another such check and balance.)

So, Where do Profits Come From?

There we go! Geronimooooo! (source)

For the first time since 1991 Australia registered two consecutive falls in its quarterly GDP figures: we’re officially in recession.

Today ABS released national accounts data corresponding to the June-August quarter and the picture ain’t pretty: GDP growth of -7.0%, the largest quarterly fall on record.

Those interested in those numbers can go here:

(source)

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.

Source: The Saturday Paper.

Imagine a capitalist who, needing two new workers, publishes an advertisement asking for applications. After receiving 470 applications for the two positions, the capitalist feels disappointed. Unemployment benefits are to blame, the capitalist says, because they are too generous. More people should have applied.

What would you say about that person? Would it make any difference if the capitalist were skinny or bald?

Let’s add details. Although the capitalist pays the wage rates prevailing in the labour market for the two positions, that industry pays the lowest wage rates. Say, the legal, prevailing median and  average weekly wages in that industry are the lowest in the land. Would that explain why many other workers, perhaps less desperate than those 470, did not apply for those two positions?

Further suppose one were to reduce unemployment benefits or even eliminate them altogether, so as to increase the number of applicants, in accordance with the capitalist’s wishes. Would that improve in any way the situation of the 470 original and more desperate applicants?

That capitalist needed two additional staff. Let’s say another 470 applicants were pushed to apply for those two positions. Would him/her hire any more employees because the number of applicants doubled?

Let’s stop here. Think well your answers to those questions before going any further. Take your time.

A Good News Story.

(source)

Amid the public health and economic crisis, occasionally something happens to make an old socialist worker feel proud. You nurses are legends.

----------

According to ABS (6302.0 - Average Weekly Earnings), last November full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings in Australia was $1,658.40 ($86K a year). Those working in the health care and social assistance industry, however, were paid less than that: $1,590.00 ($82K).

By comparison, the Australian Prime Minister’s annual salary was $540K.

Know Your Cleaners.

Once upon a time I kept close contact with commercial cleaning firms’ staff. If you are an office worker in Australia -- whether in the public or private sector -- and you often burn the midnight oil, you might have seen those cleaners. They come after 5:00-6:00 pm, Monday to Friday, once most of your co-workers have left.

After all that time, of course, my memory may need an urgent update. To give you an idea: the union covering cleaners at the time was the LHMU (Liquour, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union).

With that in mind, the piece by Associate Professor Shelley Marshall (Director of the RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre,  RMIT University) for The Conversation matches well what I remember, although Marshall doesn’t go into the endless -- and ultimately justified -- complains by building administrators, with the consequent endless harassment of cleaners by their foremen.

What really doesn’t fit at all is the opening picture in Marshall’s article. The one below seems much closer to my recollection of how such cleaners look like (which could be an important point, I would have thought):

(source)

Compare to the picture below:

You better hope your work cleaner is one of the few who has time to do a thorough job

Shutterstock

Shelley Marshall, RMIT University

On Today’s BLM Sydney March (Updated).

Whoever sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother.

Last night the NSW Supreme Court banned the Sydney-wide march “Stop All Black Deaths in Custody: Rally and Vigil for George Floyd and David Dungay”, scheduled for today (1500 AEST, Town Hall). The courts’ decision upheld concerns from both state and federal CMOs, Kerry Chant and Brendan Murphy respectively, and political authorities over COVID-19 transmission.

Why Banks as Intermediaries?

Last time we saw that banks act as intermediaries between the Morrison Government and the Reserve Bank of Australia, Australia’s central bank. Although banks acquire the bonds the Government issues, the RBA is their ultimate purchaser. The banks, however, get interests for that.

The RBA could have chosen a different scheme. For instance, it could have funded the Government. But that’s not on, as David Taylor adds. Why not? What service those banks provide?

Let’s try to understand that.

Sometimes Consistency is Costly.

In the previous post we discussed how COVID-19 changed the economic discourse about fiscal deficit spending. Here we’ll attempt to gain a deeper insight from that.

As argued previously, last March politicians, experts, journalists, and businesspeople muted their usual objections to large fiscal deficit spending. No argy bargy, no talking heads on TV formulating Very Serious (™) warnings. It’s almost as if the notions of inflation, crowding out and free markets had been magically forgotten.

Another usual stumbling block laid on the way of fiscal spending (namely the question “how will you pay for that?”) fared better, but only slightly. That I am aware, nobody seem to have asked that question when the measures were announced or when they were presented and approved in Parliament. Nevertheless, soon afterwards commentators began asking that.

Those commentators, I suppose, decided for belated consistency. Just like gloating sometimes can be justified, consistency can be fatally costly.