OPINION: Australia’s elites and vested interests have to change their ideas on what is possible with serious public policy thinking.
Australian macroeconomic numbers tell a story of larger imbalances than any in the past three quarters of a century. And yet we have just been through an election campaign during which the Morrison government sang, like Voltaire’s Candide, that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
We have unemployment at the lowest for 40 years and terms of trade the highest ever, and yet the budget deficit is immense. What would the deficit be with normal terms of trade and a less buoyant labour market? And yet the Australian elite says that the solution to an inflation problem is to cut real wages more rapidly than ever before.
that the solution is to reduce the corporate income tax rate. Records will be set by Herb Elliott margins for high profit share, low unit labour costs, and rates of decline of Australian households’ real disposable income per capita.One good thing about the public policy discussion of the past two years is that full employment reappeared as a policy objective after a long absence. We seemed to be giving full employment a chance.
We have within the government’s parliamentary ranks three economists of exceptional professional quality. We have a spectacularly intelligent and accomplished crossbench, ready to play a role in restoring integrity to political institutions and leading Australia in new directions.
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