Basically, recessions are caused by "everyone trying to save money at the same time". This is a problem because at an aggregate level, everyone's income is the same as everyone's spending.

The people at the bottom in retirement are those who have a lifetime of low earnings. This can't be solved by little tinkers to compulsory savings. An earnings-linked scheme can't fix low lifetime earnings. That's why a government benefit floor is the effective anti-poverty mechanism. Basic stuff

Difficult to overstate how misleading this is. Any % tax on capital gains (sale price less purchase price) will by mathematical construction result in differing rates relative to sale price. Including the existing regime! That’s not a “profound oversight”, that’s what CGT *is*.

David Sligar@davidsligar.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Strange piece. Prof Holden thunders about a "productivity tax" that "punishes high productivity businesses" by imposing "vastly different effective capital gains tax rates". Except it's not true. His numbers rely on the wrong denominator and money illusion.

I've never been so grateful for rain!

Reading a bunch of books this year has really solidified for me how awful the internet is in comparison nowadays. Obviously in terms of general hostility but more generally in terms of lack of depth, insight, reading comprehension, base of knowledge, etc

I've long criticised the dehumanising and patriarchal partner income test embedded everywhere in the Australian welfare state. The tax on love really does hurt families, and has a real impact on relationship formation or termination. www.reddit.com/r/Centrelink...

From the Centrelink community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the Centrelink community

reddit.com

For decades Aus has cut marginal tax rates, largely on high earners, based on exaggerated claims about work disincentives. Meanwhile, over the same period, we've set up *genuinely* punitive (at times > 100%) effective marginal tax rates on low-middle income earners. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

The Australians getting hit with up to 122 per cent tax

Some Australians who are eager to take on more work are being held back by the prospect of giving up most of their additional income – and in some cases, even paying to work.

smh.com.au

What happens when you combine growth in spending on older Australians (pensions, health, aged care) with significant growth in their concessionally taxed super + housing? A big shift in relative generosity of net transfers and final incomes for different age cohorts Interesting paper

people on the other site are doing "is living in denmark better than living in the us" discourse based on that one paper about wealth and mortality and all reasonable interpretations aside, if your metric of wellbeing says that living in mississippi is better than denmark then it's a stupid metric

fun quirk of the discourse: giving $x to everyone *except the poorest* via the tax system is called "targeted" and "progressive" giving $x to everyone *including the poorest* via the payments system is called "untargeted", "regressive" and "middle class welfare"

Germany’s ‘whatever-it-takes’ spending push to end years of stagnation - on.ft.com/3R7j4fX Can't help wondering if doing this a few years ago might have been clever

Germany’s ‘whatever-it-takes’ spending push to end years of stagnation

Europe’s largest economy could return to pre-pandemic growth trend

on.ft.com

I really like this 2021 paper from Norway showing the elegance of universal child benefits compared to kludgy income-tested ones Clear wins for achieving horizontal equity, boosting labour supply, smoothing consumption, reducing exclusion errors

The Accepted Manuscript version of my review of Spies-Butcher's new work 'Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation' is now on my blog if anyone's interested the complex process of liberalisation reforms. www.bevansadvocate.com/p/politics-i...

Two new studies show a briny, carbon-rich environment on the parent body of the Bennu asteroid was suitable for assembling the building blocks of life.

New analysis of asteroid dust reveals evidence of salty water in the early Solar System

theconversation.com

"This tax-and-transfer insurance effect—or the role of the state in reducing adult disadvantages that stem from childhood poverty—matters more than other oft-studied characteristics, such as parental education or marital status, in shaping the U.S. disadvantage compared with peer nations."

Zach Parolin@zparolin.bsky.social · 2y ago

Child poverty in the U.S. is four times as likely to lead to adult poverty than in Denmark and Germany, and twice as likely than in the UK and Australia. Why? I write about our findings on "the intergenerational persistence of poverty" today in The Atlantic: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

2024 tax expenditure statement showing super concessions estimated to reach an eye-watering $55 billion in 2024-25, billions higher than the previous estimate Even bigger difference for the forwards too - $63 billion by 2026-27!

WA GST situation is crazy

Happy 400th birthday to the world's old living bond! 🎂🎉🎊 www.ft.com/content/5122...

Happy 400th birthday to the world’s oldest bond

🎂

ft.com

A thread of mystifying and hilarious data visualisations from the "Australians" books, published in 1987 by the Australian Government. (originally brought to my attention by @mikejbeggs.bsky.social ) #ausecon #chartcrimes #dataviz 1. Spikes

There have been two economic charts going semi-viral— or at least what counts as viral for ABS statistics—in the past couple of weeks. Both claim to show a dramatic fall in living standards in Victoria and Australia. Both are wrong. gross.substack.com/p/mean-charts

Mean Charts

On Wednesdays we calculate the median wage statistics

gross.substack.com

Really interesting bit of research on actual vs publicly preferred tax rates in Norway. The gap is mainly driven by changing composition of (differentially taxed) income across the earnings distribution www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Incredible chart showing how age influences the amount of tax you pay for a given level of income. Difference driven in large part by super concessions/investment earnings Regressive, expensive and without any compelling equity justification

Excellent Amartya Sen passage on the key question of equality, 'Equality of What?' Almost all normative theories are based on a form of egalitarianism, they just differ on what they focus on providing equal an entitlement of

Amazing chart. Wheat prices way down from where they were in 1264!

Andrew Whitelaw@wheatwatcher.bsky.social · 2y ago

Wheat prices are low. My favourite chart from @episode3net.bsky.social. It tracks the price of wheat from 1264 to 2023. When we consider inflation, the price of wheat is only narrowly off record lows. Agriculture has been great at increasing supply, and keeping prices low #econsky #foodhistory

New research in Australia on "Income inequality and democratic resilience – Impacts and policy choices" from Nicholas Biddle and Matthew Gray csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/defaul... 1/ of a few

Australia's once universalist family payments system has gradually wound down to a more residualist one through changes to indexation and eligibility. From ~100% coverage in the 1970s to below 50% coverage in the 2020s 😬