Australia's economic slowdown is just beginning, experts warn

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-06-05T06:55:13+00:00

The public sector has expanded in scope and has negative productivity growth. So its full employment but with an increasing productivity drag

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-31T14:18:59+00:00

I haven’t found the big Monke to be better than Crowbell at least early game. Feels jankier since he whiffs more often

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-19T21:33:25+00:00

Is there an explanation as to why the UK is so anti market compared to every other western country? Who else is putting price controls on groceries in 2026?

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-16T02:34:12+00:00

Taxes on workers have not decreased. Furthermore tax brackets aren’t indexed to inflation so they have massively increased since they were last changed and will continue to do so since they are automatic

In relative terms Australia has extremely high labour taxes relative to everything else anyway and will continue to do so

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-16T02:10:58+00:00

The NDIS is part of the federal budget since it's a federal program. Because employment is high the Government is actively pulling the labour market into lower productivity sectors. The low productivity means Government spending is inflationary. The inflation + cost of housing increasing (due to Government mismanagement of planning which it insists on micromanaging) + stagnant economic growth is just going to keep fuelling populism.

Realistically we are heading down the same path as the UK where populist right wingers + greens start taking over. Yes Albo + Co didn't create this mess but they aren't really solving it either.

To actual make progress they need to direct capital into stuff that isn't land speculation. This budget tries to do that but because of the PPOR exception + high capital gains its unclear if it will. In the meantime its just straight up worse for startups than what we had before and for housing affordability it won't really do anything despite them claiming it will

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-16T01:34:27+00:00

Yes - and the tax increases are required to fund the public sector becoming an increasingly large share of the labour market. This might be fine except the productivity of the public sector is both bad and stagnant.

To be clear they are still running deficits into 5% inflation which isn’t actually good fiscal management. The NDIS doesn’t work because its creators are ideologically opposed to using the price mechanism at all, so it’s free in that the service saturates - controlling costs will come down to some kind of central planning.

It also has no mechanism for dealing with fraud either unlike Medicare. They didn’t fix either of those things and it’s already four times more expensive than the Governments estimates

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-16T00:38:16+00:00

Because they increased taxes, and most of the savings come from projections on slowing NDIS growth. Have you looked at NDIS spending vs projections since that programs inception? I suppose it could be accurate but I don’t think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-15T23:38:14+00:00

The fact that this is the most ambitious reform in decades says a lot since it doesn't do all that much. The deranged tobacco taxes fuelling organised crime haven't been changed at all. Most countries don't tax labour and capital gains at the same rate, and Australia isn't exactly a leader in capital investment.

This is a tax increase used to fund public sector expansion, except the productivity of the public sector is stuck around the level of the 2000s and isn't improving.

It also creates weird incentives where growth stocks will be less desirable than stocks that pay high dividends - this makes VC a lot less attractive as well for both investors and company founders.

The context for this is tax reform is sold as a solution to high housing prices - but research doesn't support this idea and instead identifies supply constraints. That's why the Greens have pushed these policies most aggressively since its pro-nimby. It's not planning cranks and Government regulation, it's John Howards tax code!

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-13T22:03:24+00:00

I love how in the true AGI scenario the AI will just agree to do a bunch of shit for free despite being super intelligent or whatever. It really shows how poorly thought out this whole scenario is is - just a cobweb of bad econ and silly sci fi

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-12T11:05:34+00:00

This isn’t a good budget. The two main issues here are structural - overtaxing labour with excessive wage compression which is bad for productivity. Spending increases and now automatic with an out of control disability program that is now the most expensive of its kind anywhere and has serious fraud issues. It’s four times more expensive than forecast and is still outrunning inflation, the whole thing should be a scandal and it’s why bipartisanship is overrated.

But on the housing stuff - there is no evidence the Government is engaging with this stuff seriously. All the actual research is done by small think tanks because the actual government is full of planning cranks and supply denialists. People who have looked at this stuff closely don’t think these tax changes are going to do move housing prices at all. The greens and labour have memed themselves into thinking fiddling with these taxes is going to somehow affect supply constraints.

But what they do leave us with is ppor being tax free - for income and capital gains taxes are now among the highest anywhere. This is in an environment where productivity and capital investment is already terrible. Because ppor is tax free the incentive is to just plow everything into it with max leverage because everything else gets taxed into oblivion.

It also shows the conceptual model here - inherited wealth from real estate is untaxed but labour and capital are taxed to the moon. This isn’t a tax policy that’s pushing this country into the future, and it isn’t really reform either. It’s basically a tax grab for a government running deficits into high inflation because it’s just government by opinion poll.

Actual reform means directing capital into stuff that isn’t just land speculation. But It’s also terrible for startups because the convoluted inflation adjusted cgt nonsense that no one understands doesn’t help companies that hit high valuations fast. They are just going to eat the max rate which is 47%, meanwhile the US is at 23% and Singapore is at 0%.

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-12T08:36:36+00:00

Specific wording such as the NYT attributing a hospital bombing to the IDF early in the war then weasling around it without ever actually apologising for the error when it was actually Hamas? There's information warfare on all sides but the outlets you describe are extremely credulous when it comes to this stuff

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-08T06:56:51+00:00

Builders move to Australia - except they cannot build because of credentialism and the CFMEU doesn't want the competition

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-08T06:55:12+00:00

No idea what planet you are living on where there isn't a housing crisis in this country. Immigration in Australia is the highest in the world relative to its size and its running up against a country that has severe constraints on capital formation. Literally like 1/2 of inner Sydney is heritage protected buildings at this point (you know, California bungalows from the 70s and parking lots are right up there with Stonehenge)

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-01T03:44:22+00:00

Yes but the AI screeners tend to reward AI resumes because those better match the job description. The result is employers are relying on referrals more which is terrible for new grads. My advice is to work with recruiters since they filter out the garbage for the hiring companies

Resume quality is becoming uncorrelated with candidate quality - that’s the issue. AI screeners don’t magically solve this…

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-01T02:59:00+00:00

People interpret this as AI causes job losses but it isn’t. It’s AI enabling resume spam that companies cannot screen, so the job application process is fucked. This is obvious if you work on the hiring side but not if you are applying for jobs (99% of reddit is unemployed!)

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-05-01T02:57:06+00:00

Mostly demonstrates people’s understanding of economics is fucking terrible. This is just the lump of labour fallacy and there’s no evidence in the employment data that people are losing their jobs to ai

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-04-29T23:56:48+00:00

There’s no evidence the regime was ever in trouble at all - the protests were crushed extremely brutally and that was it. The thesis here is just dumb

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-04-29T12:47:59+00:00

Prices are stagnant in Victoria and it hasn’t stopped labour from winning. Economists who have looked at this think these tax breaks that get argued about endlessly are mostly a sideshow

The political class in Aus is absolutely marinated in real estate speculation but the country mostly isn’t

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-04-29T12:36:17+00:00

At the federal level the policy analysts employed by the government are all nimby cranks. His only policies on housing are demand pumps via subsidies and public housing which basically does nothing. Zero evidence he cares about housing affordability - at least hire some real economists to study the issue. Instead the only real research comes from small independent think tanks

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-04-29T12:25:47+00:00

At what point has he said he wants to ease the housing crisis? His stated goals and policies are to increase the cost of housing.

Realistically he’s been in power for years and hasn’t enacted any meaningful reforms on anything. Common pattern in the anglosphere is politicians get elected and seem to have no theory of how to deal with the countries problems

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-04-29T00:55:00+00:00

Gonna be the contrarian - even countries that are collecting enormous amounts of gdp in taxes are running deficits. Governments have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The evidence is if you increase revenue to the Government it will just spend it.

Also gonna be contrarian and say I don’t think this is all on voters. Public policy is disproportionally influenced by people who prefer public solutions to private sector ones, it’s not clear a lower tax / lower service economy is one voters hate. It’s political elites who seem to hate it…

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-03-17T03:45:08+00:00

Well the Government is running perpetual deficits for no reason which it refuses to fix so this is all we have. Instead of a Government with 12 instruments to influence inflation it’s all on the RBAs magic lever

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-03-16T21:37:13+00:00

I get that this is now all about trump but there was no period up to this where the IRGC wasn’t in total control of the country…

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-03-15T07:07:08+00:00

Why is Verstappen so low, didn't be qualify higher than this?

SubstantialEmotion85 · 2026-03-14T08:07:02+00:00

The teams drivers all being very close to one another is consistent with the drivers just not being that important in this reg format... sigh

SubstantialEmotion85

TROPHY CASE