Suppose(!) an Oz government or IR tribunal, wanted to shift the standard working week to four eight-hour days.
Here's one possible path: Reduce standard working week from 38 hours to 35, a demand of the trade union movement that's been on the books for the last 50 years. With four weeks annual leave and 10 public holidays per year, that implies just over 1600 hours per year (excluding sick leave etc) 1/..

An interesting question asked of Vladimir Putin by Margarita Simonyan (of Russian propaganda outlet RT) at the St Petersburg Economic Summit Mr President, I would like to show you something that I have brought with me especially. It is juice, and it used to be so nicely coloured. It does not matter what sort of juice it is; you cannot even see the brand here, although it is a popular one.

This is the kind of thing that makes journalists distrusted. "The government has previously denied Ms Higgins’ partner David Sharaz’s claims that the PMO media team was “backgrounding” journalists against him." If this happened, lots of journos know and aren't telling. If not, it ought to be easy enough for someone to do a ringaround Press Gallery and confirm PMO is telling the truth.

Talking of reforms, how much is left of the micro reform era. Having privatised telecomms and (most electricity), government is now building/commissioning broadband network and electricity generation and storage.

Looking at private investments, all the top tech firms are essentially mature monopolies Microsoft's last big innovation was buying 86-DOS in 1980, and renaming it MS-DOS. Everything since has been me-too, though very successful

Supposing the Dems win Presidency and both Houses, and override the filibuster, can they legislate the equivalent of Roe and Casey, for example in an expanded civil rights act? Those decisions found an implied right in the constitution, but it's hard (for a non-US, non-lawyer) to see how SC can find an implied prohibition to replace it. Can they rule it out on states' rights grounds?

Crikey author Adam Schwab claims the data indicates lockdowns don't really work crikey.com.au/?p=742534 "The data" turns out to mean "a bunch of rightwing hacks with no relevant expertise". @BernardKeane TJ Rodgers: semiconductor entrepreneur "Rodgers is known for his public relations acumen, brash personality, and strong advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. "
Donald Luskin: far right finance guy, National Review Online etc

Clean-energy technologies now together account for 2.5TW of installed capacity globally, more than coal or gas, says new report rechargenews.com/transition/sol… Also, now more solar than wind, and more new renewables (solar+wind) than hydro

Facts don't care about your ideology, OR, rightwing cancel culture. Rereading @jerry_jtaylor on ideology as motivated cognition
niskanencenter.org/the-alternativ… This problem extended beyond the realm of climate change ... libertarian friends and colleagues were engaged in fierce, uncompromising debate about empirical matters that had nothing to do with libertarian principles or commitments. Is the Keynesian multiplier consequential?

A few thoughts on the fact that r < 0, where r is the real rate of interest on long-term (< 30 years) debt for developed country governments Situation predates pandemic and has happened despite central bank attempts to resist it, such as abandoned attempt by Fed to raise funds rate in 2019.

The functions of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC) will be to:

1. mobilise whole-of-economy effort to ensure the economic and social impacts from the global COVID-19 pandemic are anticipated and mitigated;

pmc.gov.au/nccc/terms-ref… assist the Government to ensure all resources are marshalled in a coordinated and effective manner; and

2. drive the development and co-ordination of staged and proportionate plans on critical non-health factors including:

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen to zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk. If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism.

If (open market) return to capital is consistently negative, can our economic system be called capitalism ? If not, what is it? Inflation-protected 30 year bonds, now offering -0.3 per cent return.
treasury.gov/resource-cente…

Government ‘needs to prepare for more frequent economic shocks’ UK Office for Budget Responsibility. OBR - Implausible that the financial sector could ever be totally resilient to extreme events such as a major pandemic, so the need for the state to act as an ‘insurer of last resort’ will remain.
The government’s future fiscal strategy will need to take account of this risk.

Back in 2004, I observed that "There is only one real instance of political correctness in Australia today and that is that you are never, ever allowed to call anyone a racist."

johnquiggin.com/2004/12/05/the… That's because (a) everyone agrees that racists have no place in decent society (b) everyone knows there are a lot of racists in public life and elsewhere.

Michael Shellenberger's "apology essay" is the last gasp of "ecomodernism" Although ecomodernists make a lot of claims, the only one that is distinctive is that nuclear power is the zero-carbon "baseload" energy source needed to replace coal, and that mainstream environmentalists have wrongly opposed it.

In principle, any income-tested payment can be replaced by a universal payment funded in such a way that the marginal tax rate under the universal scheme is equal effective marginal tax rate (income tax rate + benefit withdrawal rate). So the effects on incentives are the same. There are some big practical problems arising from the fact that benefits are paid to households, while taxes are (mostly) levied on individual outcomes.

Some #MMT economists advocate rationing (WWII-style) as an alternative to taxing the rich and thereby freeing resources for Green New Deal. levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_931.pdf
It's hard to overstate how bad an idea this is, but I'll make a few points in that direction First, it's politically suicidal. Except under actual wartime conditions, voters (sensibly) hate rationing. If linked to the GND, it would be the end of the whole idea.

Which high-income countries will have worst death rates from Covid-19? I predict US, UK and Sweden. UK about to pass Spain, similarly with Sweden and France, USA and Ireland.
statista.com/statistics/110…

What Sweden got wrong theguardian.com/world/2020/may… The basic perception was, I think, that sooner or later, irrespective of what you do, you will have the whole population infected,” Annika Linde,former state epidemiologist said.

Mitchell, Wray and Watts Macroeconomics p 323, give a the correct version of the #MMT position on budget aggregates . Taxes create real resource space in which the government can fulfil its socio-economic mandate. Taxes reduce the non-government sector’s purchasing power and hence its ability to command real resources for the government to command with its spending.