Catallaxy Files

In The Australian today (subscription required):
“According to Julia Gillard, things are difficult for Australian manufacturing as the resource boom threatens “to hollow out other sections of the economy”.

There was a front page story in yesterday’s Washington Post, “For Romney and Paul, a strategic alliance”. Moreover, this was no hit piece or structured, so far as I could see, in a negative direction. It was simply about how Mitt Romney and Ron Paul like each other personally.

Despite deep differences on a range of issues, Romney and Paul became friends in 2008, the last time both ran for president. So did their wives, Ann Romney and Carol Paul. The former Massachusetts governor compliments the Texas Congressman during debates, praising Paul’s religious faith during the last one in Jacksonville, Fla. Immediately afterward, as is often the case, the Pauls and the Romneys gravitated together to say hello.

This is how politics on the same side of the fence needs to be done when the enemy awaits. But I suspect that it is deeper still. They both represent similar values and on domestic policy there may not be a dime’s worth of practical difference between them.

Meanwhile the ducks are falling into line. Donald Trump’s endorsement today carries I suspect few votes. Its signifcance is in the recognition that you should not mess with someone who may very well be the president a year from today.

I have an opinion piece in today’s edition of The Australian (subscription required) concerning the economics and, indeed, ethics of public sector indebtedness.

A key point I make in the piece is as follows:

“To argue that we are better off because others are sinking in a fiscal sea of red ink faster diverts our focus away from the common underlying cause of government overspending that requires remedial attention, rather than empty promises and intergenerational buck-passing.”

The SMH has a profile of John Roskam.

His CV is a classic think tank mix of law, commerce, academia and politics, plus a stint at global mining company Rio Tinto. Indeed, it was a fellow law student at Melbourne University, John Daley – who now leads the Grattan Institute – who suggested that Roskam apply for his first job at the Liberal Party, as a junior research assistant for Victorian MP Don Hayward.

Sinclair has discussed a couple of paragraphs from the Trenberth op ed, but forgive me for offering my two cent’s worth.

The 456 words of this op ed, presumably written by Trenberth and signed by 37 of his friends and colleagues is dwarfed by the 532 words used to list the author and his co-signers and their various credentials. It is typical of the folly of appealing to authority / credentials rather than mounting a sensible argument.

That 38 people would put their names to such a pathetic attempt at defence says a lot about their character and aptitude. After studying a second-rate ‘science’ and enjoying a long period of excessive returns for that study, they are now finding life is becoming a little more difficult and their views are coming under attack by scientists considerably more intelligent than these 38. Is this the best they can do?

So pathetic is the piece, it is irresistible to pull it apart.

Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?

Well, yes. Dental health is an excellent indicator of one’s heart condition.

In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Trenberth, and many others, (all climate scientist types) have a brief op-ed (the list of names crowds out any space for mounting an argument) in The Australian.

In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work.

Yes – that’s more or less true. So how then do these climate scientists explain the last paragraph? (emphasis added)

There is also clear evidence the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.

While a GP might ‘order’ decades of economic growth, it isn’t clear that is how a market economy operates.

Rowan Dean has a great piece in the AFR lampooning those opposed to the Fairfax raid. Read the whole thing (well worth the subscription).

Acting Greens leader Christine Milne was quick to express her dismay. “This is a national scandal,” she said. “If you have a couple of people using newspapers as a mouthpiece, that is a real problem.

“For years, we in the Greens have had a total monopoly on all discussion about climate change and the long-overdue, successful and hugely popular implementation of the much-loved carbon tax, which is going to solve the global problem of an overheating planet that we daily see all around us destroying the lives of millions of people and obliterating entire species as massively populated islands disappear beneath the waves before our very eyes. The last thing a democratic, vibrant and free press needs is someone who disagrees with us.”

Recently returned from her “Rehabilitation and Re-programming Retreat” on the shores of the Volga, fellow Greens senator Lee Rhiannonovski went even further.

“For years, we have had a direct conduit to the oppressed, latte sipping masses of the inner cities thanks to our close ties with certain sections of the Fairfax media,” she said. “The idea that this should be put in jeopardy by someone who represents hard-working, successful Australian entrepreneurs and members of the capitalist conspiracy to give people jobs and keep our economy strong is an absolute betrayal of everything we believe in.”

As she was whisked away in her government limo to attend a taxpayer-funded banquet at Marrickville Town Hall in honour of the brave boycotters of Max Brenner, the senator made it clear that she would not sit idly by and watch greedy, self-interested minority groups try to influence the mainstream press.

In an article in The Punch, Senator Matt Thislethwaite (formerly Deputy Secretary of Unions NSW) promises to provide

just the facts on Labor’s workplace reforms

The good Senator then states

A simple measure of unsuccessful bargaining in workplaces is the number of days lost due to industrial disputes. Since 1991 the number of days lost to industrial disputes has been falling. In 1991 the average days lost during the year was 239.4 days per 1000 employees.

To compare, last year the figure was 15.9 days lost per 1000 employees. This is a significant drop. There has been an average reduction in days lost to industrial disputes almost every year for the past two decades.

And provides this chart

Well, yes, Industrial Disputes Australia (Cat. No. 6321.0.55.001) shows that there were 15.9 days lost per 1000 employees during the last financial year. But it also shows that in the September quarter (the most recent publication, released on 1 December 2011), that there were 10.1 days lost per 1000 employees: an annual rate of 40.4 days. Thislethwaite also states

Since the introduction of the Fair Work Act, this figure has not risen higher than 20 days lost per 1000 employees.

With 10.1 days in the first quarter of 2011-12, it is likely that 20 days lost per 1000 employees will be exceeded this year.

Here is an alternative way to show the ABS data, with the trend not being quite as favourable to the good Senator’s argument.

 Thislethwaite seems to have a poor grasp on the concept of productivity. Here he seems focused on Keating’s 1992 industrial relations reforms, criticising Work Choices but neglecting to mention the likely impact of the Rudd/Gillard backsliding on industrial relations. These most recent examples of labour market policies, which reduce the flexibility of bargaining and which lead to higher wages without higher commensurate productivity tradeoffs, are more likely to lead to higher unemployment and lower productivity growth. Here, too, Thislethwaite seems to hitch his wagon to labour productivity rather than multi-factor productivity.

Although Thislethwaite is a Senator, he would do well to read the Productivity Commission’s submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics which is an excellent guide to productivity issues in Australia.

On the front page of The Washington Post we find this snippet about Newt Gingrich:

The former speaker, having seen plenty of ups and downs, vows that ‘people power’ will overcome ‘money power’ in the end.

This is almost the perfect statement of a leftist ideologue, where the evil Mr Moneybags is set upon for stealing the election along with everything else from the benighted poor.

For myself, having been quite hopeful about Gingrich on his second coming during this campaign, I have become totally disenchanted and I can see that many others have travelled the same road over the past few weeks. Having been a very early supporter of Ronald Reagan back even before 1980, and being the very essence of a small government fiscal hawk, being every inch the Tea Party member that I am, and holding a very low membership number amongst the Anyone But Obama school of thought, I am hardly a sell out to the left.

If you want Obama out, fiscal discipline returned, Obamacare reversed and a stronger American international presence, there is no one more likely to achieve all of these than Romney. He is, as an added bonus, also far more electable, a not minor consideration I would have thought.