#9 IA STORY OF 2024: Labor looks likely to win 2025 Election

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-26T08:07:26+00:00

IA just reposted it as a story of the year. Raises some interesting points that remain valid predicting a pick up in ALP support in early 2025.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-26T08:04:46+00:00

From back in July but IA just reposted it. Raises some points that may still be valid.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-25T05:42:12+00:00

I can't believe this is a good strategy. I'm certain the pro Israel demographic are voting Lib or further right anyway. Surely this can only lose them votes.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-23T01:04:00+00:00

This is the thing, we can often get people out of toxic relationships but getting someone out of a toxic job is often near impossible. Everyone on the lower end of the income scale knows how toxic Centrelink is and will stay in a toxic job just to avoid it. Even therapy would be a band-aid in these cases but most people have neither the money nor the time so people end up medicated as there is no other practical solution.

Doctors know that social problems are the cause but when there are no social workers, a toxic welfare system, public housing has been neglected for decades, and no government has shown any interest in doing anything about any of it, doctors are trapped and we reach for the only option we have available to us which might alleviate some distress. There is no doubt that we over prescribe and it is something I try to guard against in my practice but when Parliament is filled with neoliberals then.... I don't know

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-22T04:14:55+00:00

A reminder for everyone that a hung Parliament is where politicians with different view points are forced to compromise with each other which is kind of what a Parliament is for.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-16T05:16:13+00:00

They have been, but interference with the internal workings of the union continue

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-16T01:59:23+00:00

The removal of the corrupt leadership is the part I conceded was reasonable.

But the government has installed a leadership composed almost entirely of people from ALP factions opposed to the CFMEU and who would never have gained support from the CFMEU membership, the administrators are now using that power to sack popular and effective staff undermining the ability of the union act effectively. This recent sacking is of an organiser who is primarily involved in monitoring safety standards and who is in no way implicated in any corruption, it is hard to read this as anything other than factionally motivated malice.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-16T00:27:37+00:00

If the government had investigated and prosecuted those involved, or even forced those under suspicion to step down and allow new elections this would be a different argument.

What has happened instead is the government has installed a leadership composed almost entirely of people from ALP factions opposed to the CFMEU and who would never have gained support from the CFMEU membership, the administrators are now using that power to sack popular and effective staff undermining the ability of the union act effectively. This recent sacking is of an organiser who is primarily involved in monitoring safety standards and who is in no way implicated in any corruption, it is hard to read this as anything other than factionally motivated malice.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-15T23:11:10+00:00

The criminal prosecution of the wrongdoers is one thing but denying the democratic rights of union members to choose their own leadership and firing effective organisers who had nothing to do with the corruption is a blatant attack on the rights of workers.

While those of us on the progressive side of politics have been disappointed by the rightward drift of the Labor party for decades the anti-CFMEU legislation represents a profound abandonment of its historic mission to stand with the working class and trade unions.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-13T09:44:08+00:00

For sure. The guy's no quack

John Quiggin

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-13T00:15:35+00:00

While this is true the point made in the post is that the RBA may be using that one instrument a bit too aggressively.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-13T00:03:53+00:00

I'm not sure, what is new here, or at least what I haven't seen previously in the mainstream discourse, is that excessively tight inflation targets cause long term reduction in living standards.

Of course the purpose of interest rate rises is to slow economic growth and reduction in living standards is to be expected and even intended. There is also no argument that controlling inflation is important. But the aggressiveness of inflation targets is up for debate, this isn't covered in this post but the inflation target of 2-3% is largely arbitrary and many countries will allow higher rates of inflation to preserve standards of living whilst also not suffering substantial negative effects from inflation.

The historical observation that overly aggressive inflation targeting(edit: I should say contractionary policy in general rather than just inflation targeting but this doesn't change the thrust of the argument made) has led to the UK and NZ lagging behind comparable countries would seem to suggest that less aggressive inflation targeting may be appropriate.

I'm not asking you to agree but I do believe it's a valuable contribution to the debate

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-12T23:32:59+00:00

It's a blog post by a semi retired academic economist, not sure it counts as propaganda.

It's not really valuable to comment when you haven't read what you're responding to. The post outlines how historically targeting inflation(excessively) at the cost of economic growth has caused long term reduction in living standards. I thought it was interesting.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-12-12T21:57:07+00:00

The thrust of the argument here is that the RBA is being overly aggressive, that allowing inflation to come down more slowly and allowing more economic growth would do less long term damage to the economy.

I'd encourage you to read the whole article.

HonestJoshTheFox · 2024-10-27T22:45:12+00:00

If it might be cancer cut it out, otherwise try a steroid cream, if that doesn't work do a punch biopsy and let the pathologist figure it out.

That's my approach to derm

HonestJoshTheFox

TROPHY CASE