John Quiggin
@johnquiggin.bsky.social
Economist & blogger @ http://johnquiggin.com, http://crookedtimber.org. http://johnquiggin.substack.com/?utm http://mstdn.social/@johnquiggin I repost my content, using the #repost hashtag. You can go to settings/filters to avoid seeing the same post.
PPP's in the context of health (and other human service delivery) historically don't work. PPP's are a hangover from Friedman style economics that were proven to fail with GFC. of 2007. It is a failed experiment. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
'Shocking': Hospital inquiry urges axing of public-private partnership
A parliamentary committee has handed down its findings after an investigation into a Newcastle hospital where staff reported maggots falling from the ceiling.
abc.net.au
pressure needed immediately petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/de...
Demand Kmart take the Anko surveillance glasses off the shelf
Camera glasses are moving quickly into the mainstream. Meta has sold more than 7 million pairs and hired Kylie Jenner to sell more. At $89, against several hundred dollars for the Meta version, the te...
petitions.getup.org.au
Has anyone connected the dots between Ashley Hinson and Susan Collins shared network of Epstein-adjacent donors? Marc Rowan central to both, Lutnick big donor to Hinson. Feeds into general narrative of Republican corruption wnich Dems need to push hard. #uspol
SpaceX has a more immediate and life-threatening problem than a falling share price. In a series of all stock deals before the IPO, SpaceX acquired xAI (Grok), which had previously acquired X/Twitter.
Article lists co-operating autocracies, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, but not US. Trump presented as a bumbler failing to counterbalance dictators. In reality he loves them and want to join (even if Iran has spurned him, and China wants to be the capo di tutti capos)
The rise of authoritarian cooperation: A new illiberal order?
The world's leading autocracies, notably China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, are increasingly pulling in the same direction but the grouping is transactional,...
lowyinstitute.org
The race to the bottom in corporate taxation finally seems to be over
Corporate tax revenues remain elevated while tax rates stabilise, according to new OECD data
Corporate income tax (CIT) revenues remained at historically high levels in 2023, while corporate tax rates have broadly stabilised, according to the 2026 edition of OECD Corporate Tax Statistics released today.
oecd.org
Looking at latest revelations from NSW ICAC, it’s comforting to know that at the national level nothing like this is happening. Politicians, senior bureacrats and party apparatchiks are all squeaky clean. At least that’s what we can infer from NACC. #auspol
(Association) Football to become like the UN. FIFA as General Assembly with one vote per country, UEFA + South America as Security Council, with power over the big decisions
Easy test that an advocate of budget balance is.a fraud: they talk only about cutting expenditure and not about raising revenue. Today: Michelle Bullock, Ken Henry & Chris Richardson. Peter Hartcher quotes them at length but manages a single brief mention of higher taxes.
One bold, fiscal move would ease our economic anxiety. Does the PM have the nerve?
Balancing the federal budget would reduce Australia’s risks, improve stability and lift confidence. But it would require political courage.
smh.com.au
Crooked Timber is back online, with our hacking problem resolved. Many thanks to our readers and commenters for their patience during a difficult episode.
Coal fell to 49.7%, with renewables climbing to 41.2% for the January-June period
China, the world’s largest coal consumer, generated less than 50% of its electricity from the fossil fuel in the six months to June, marking a first for the country which has been promoting the use of...
China, the world’s largest coal consumer, has been promoting the use of renewable energy, with a deadline for coal consumption to peak no later than 2030.
nbcnews.com
Please help me in the campaign against preventable blindness.
Three sleeps to go
Sunny Coast marathon coming up
johnquiggin.substack.com
Before we even got to the scandal stage, how could leaders of NSW Catholic Church have thought it appropriate that the head of Catholic Schools NSW should be a senior figure on the Liberal Party? McInerney has resigned but his patron Archbishop Fisher should go too. #nswpol
A general lesson from the fall of Jacinta Allan. Once a potential leadership challenge is public enough to be a serious possibiiity, it's sure to happen. And, once it happens, incumbent is bound to lose, maybe after the first vote, or the second, or (in the best case) at the next election. #auspol
This Platformer post suggests Bluesky has immense " hostility to non-consensus views" on AI, referring to people debunking concerns about the recet OpenAI "breakout" I agree on the hostility, but not on the consensus. www.platformer.news/r/b1418e25?m...
A big week for AI denialism
In the wake of OpenAI’s cyberattack against Hugging Face, few seem ready to acknowledge the implications
platformer.news
it was once expected that a finding of corruption in a govt department would entail resignation of the minister in charge. Now it's big news that a minister in the ACT government has done the right thing. By contrast, Jacinta Allan, hanging on like grim death #auspol
Breaking: Rachel Stephen-Smith elected ACT's new deputy chief minister
Rachel Stephen-Smith takes over as ACT deputy chief minister from Yvette Berry, who resigned last week after the Integrity Commission made "serious corrupt conduct" findings against two senior public servants in her education portfolio.
abc.net.au
We don't need massive data centres, and gas-fired power plants, to manage the use of LLMs as a replacement for Google. Hyperscaling is a destructive waste of resources,
Protect Our Water: Say No to New Data Centre Near Darwin
Beetaloo Energy are proposing a massive $40bn data centre on our Country. The NT government has promised 185 hectares of stolen Larrakia land for a gas-fired power station and data centre that...
act.350.org.au
I don't buy strong claims about AI, and I'm particularly sceptical about agents. But I also find LLMs like ChatGPT a massive improvement on Google for all sorts of purposes. Yesterday, I had to fix the electronic gear changer on my Canyon bike. Basically a matter of swapping out a button battery.
TIL, again, that it's easy to make mistakes and important to correct them. I misread a source as saying that the UK has no equivalent to our Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In fact, the Cabinet Office fills that role. Apologies for the error.
Some basic propositions about voting, maybe of interest to readers of Nate Silver #uspol
Nate Silver discovers the educated poor
"Some basic propositions about voting
johnquigginblog.substack.com
How privatised companies got so rich - we paid.
Always remember how Macquarie built its millionaires on outrageous tolls and charges | John Quiggin
As Shemara Wikramanayake retires with shares worth hundreds of millions, the public is left counting the cost of high prices for utilities, roads and airports
theguardian.com
Nate Silver discovers the educated poor
Nate Silver discovers the educated poor
"Some basic propositions about voting
johnquigginblog.substack.com
Protests against data centers are doing the shareholders and creditors of AI a big favour, slowing down the hyperscaling race, and protecting them from a future full of stranded assets.
Sad, but not in the least surprising. This is #Albo, after all. I asked at the time whether he would rise to the occasion, and noted "Betteridge’s Law of headlines says the answer to any headline question should be “No”
Australia had a chance to do something big. Then came weak leadership and fatal errors
The failure to land a new national gun buyback scheme offers an insight into the state of politics and profound power of self-interest.
smh.com.au
Orban was done in at least as much by his swimming pool as by his attacks on democracy in Hungary. Obvious and concrete as opposed to complex and abstract. Same for Trump. #uspol
Democrats need to hammer Trump on his unprecedented corruption | Steven Greenhouse
To win in this year’s midterm elections, the party must highlight that Trump has made huge financial gains while millions struggle to make ends meet
theguardian.com
When Parody Candidates float better policy ideas than 95% of career politicians .... 😎
Count Binface@countbinface.bsky.social · 3y agoUnder a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface
With Monster Raving Loony Party entering Clacton by-election, it's like Monty Python election night special, except official Silly party running against a split "Very Silly/Utterly Absurd" vote. #ukpol en.wikipedia.org/wik...
