Australia’s net debt was A$174.5 billion in September 2013, when the Coalition took office. The debt is forecast to grow to $872 billion in 2020-21 (44.8 percent of GDP). Then it is forecast to hit $1 trillion in 2021-22 (50.5 percent of GDP). Then, $1.1 trillion in 2022-23 (51.6 percent of GDP). Yet, as a proportion of GDP, our […]

President-elect Joe Biden will likely find himself in a bind. Let me explain. An important difference with Donald Trump is that he was not ONLY a President. He also leads a social movement. Trump’s support base is a coalition of different forces- not very well educated white working-class folk, some white supremacist extremists (some of […]

The ALP’s National Policy Forum (NPF) is responsible for producing the draft platform for the Party which goes for consideration by Labor’s National Conference. The NPF, in consultation with the relevant shadow ministers, has released a consultation draft of the National Platform for input from ALP constituent units. It is, on the whole, a very […]

Paul Keating has called on the Reserve Bank to help the Federal Government with fiscal spending. Normally governments offset their spending through either taxation or borrowing. But taxation is deflationary so is not an appealing option at the moment and there is a concern (largely exaggerated) about increasing government debt. Keating has essentially called for […]

Financialization means that today’s capitalism is fundamentally different from the capitalism that governments had to regulate 40 years ago. The financial sector has always been important to capitalism. And the work of French economist Tomas Piketty shows capitalism has always had a general tendency to increase inequality absent corrective government interventions. This is simply because the […]