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.

VE Day: Germanophobia.

Marshal Zhukov reading the German Instrument of Surrender
in Berlin, Germany on March 8, 1945. Also seen Arthur
Tedder, Marshal of the Royal Air Force. [A]

As a late baby-boomer, I grew up among people who experienced WWII first hand. We were their children.

My youth’s old-timers carried with them bad, bad memories. Rancour towards Germans wasn’t unusual, even among those who were never directly affected. It wasn’t unusual either, for us kids to hear from our elders that “the only good German is a dead German”.

Forgiveness, I guess, was a lot easier for us, kids.

Back then that rancour had always, invariably, angered me. No matter how many bad guys, or how bad they were – I would reply – there were good Germans too, surely? Blanket condemnations are inherently unjust. Those good Germans deserved not only to be spared but acknowledged.

#ClimateStrike May 6 – Sydney.

The SS4C kids are calling a strike this Friday 6. In Sydney strikers and supporters will meet at Town Hall at 12:00.

These are their demands:

1. Net zero by 2030 which means no new coal, oil or gas projects.
2. 100% renewable energy generation and exports by 2030.
3. Fund a just transition and job creation for all fossil fuel workers and their communities.

Their website offers more info. You can also donate.

This strike, in particular, could be crucial, because the elections are two weeks away (the strike is COVID-safe: bring face mask/hand sanitiser and stay at home if unwell).

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May Day, May Day! Wages Down! Wages Down!

(source)

In the last 23 years nominal wages growth in Australia peaked in the second half of 2008 (4.3%). Since then, with partial and short-lived recoveries, the general tendency has been to a fall. We seem to be in the midst of one such recovery: from a low of 1.4% in the second half of 2020 to 2.3% by the end of 2021. When will this recovery, very partial as it is, stop or how much ground will it regain remains to be seen.

Although not ideal, in the low-inflation environment prevalent in Australia for much of the time since September 2013 (when the incumbent COALition took power), federal policy-makers found little political pressure to lift wages: wage-earners may not have felt financially buoyant, but on average they could keep pace with the cost of living.

(source)