The Policy Post

The increasingly unacceptable faces of capitalism. The corporate world has seldom been held in more contempt than right now. It goes far beyond Qantas and PWC to strike at the heart of the way global business functions.

What’s the Intergenerational Report really for? Projecting 40 years ahead is nonsense. The Intergenerational Reports have quite a different purpose – to justify what the government has already decided to do.

  Labor has one last chance to save public hospitals. But will they? Only the federal government has the capacity to put the hospital system back together. And a disaster unfolding in one state reveals what is already beginning in all the others.

  Neoliberalism is dead, killed by the GFC. A new, fairer era has begun. As Australia swings dramatically away from trickle-down economics, the rich are getting a smaller slice of the pie. Those in the middle are doing better – but not, yet, those right at the bottom.

  It was the biggest health reform since Medicare. It didn’t work. In 2011, Julia Gillard introduced a new funding system to fix Australia’s troubled public hospitals. So why did it fail so badly?

  Artificial intelligence will upend our economy. We’re utterly unprepared.   The AI revolution promises a vastly more efficient economy. But who pays the price of massive job losses, soaring inequality and social dislocation?

  Which state has the worst housing crisis? The crisis is everywhere – and it’s the result of decades of deliberate neglect and failed ideology. This analysis reveals how each state rates, from the least-bad to the worst.

  That very silly stadium in Hobart. The saga of a billion-dollar football stadium encompasses tragedy and farce – and reveals familiar folly at the core of government policy-making.

  The debt-and-deficit scare is back, wearing Labor’s colours. It’s still a dangerous lie.   Despite what we’re told, government debt is actually benign. ‘Budget repair’ is not.

  Early childhood: the neglected frontier that impacts almost everything. Education for our youngest kids is the key to an optimal future – for them and for the country. So why does Australia do it so badly? And what is being lost?

  Quietly, Chalmers moves on WA’s dodgy GST deal. Nobody is going to be happy. A rather large time-bomb, bequeathed to Jim Chalmers by the previous government, is set to explode in just over three years from now.

  Is Labor serious about health? Doesn’t look like it. Mark Butler’s Medicare “Taskforce” isn’t action on health reform. It’s a substitute for action.

  How civilised? A scorecard of the 20 richest nations.   The wealthiest countries have no excuse for neglecting their own people. Here’s an assessment of the good – and the not-so-good.

  Inequality and the neoliberal legacy. Half a century of trickle-up economics has decreased prosperity,  overburdened the health system – and caused a vast number of premature deaths. In Australia, the Howard government did most of the damage.

You’re better off than you think. (Who knew?) All the news is bad. Power prices up, wages down, interest rates up. Poverty and doom await. Or do they?

Neoliberalism: an obituary. The ideology which ruled the world’s economies for half a century has, after a long illness, finally died. Liz Truss tripped over its decaying corpse on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

Census delivers a big budget windfall to the small states. Almost $900 million will be transferred this financial year from the biggest states to the smaller jurisdictions. And Victoria will lose the federal seat it recently gained.

‘The economy exists within society, not vice-versa’: Saul Eslake on the GFC, debt-and-deficit and why we need to pay more tax.

Universal health care is the cheapest option. Anything less costs more. Starving the health system of money and resources is the economics of stupidity. Any savings are soon eclipsed by the massive cost to the economy, to the society and to government budgets.

Wages from Howard to Morrison (and the $80 billion a year deficit).   Since the Howard government was elected in 1996, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from wage-earners to the owners and managers of capital.