Greg,
> Like I
> said before, there will always be people around who will try to make
> an easy buck if they see an opportunity to do so and there are people
> who will pay for the service.
http://www2.uq.edu.au/newsreleases/view.asp?n_id=1435&method=
byYear&freeText=&year=1999&c_id=
Academic calls for more social impact research on economic
rationalism
A University of Queensland academic has criticised economic
rationalism as a "dumb" economic theory and has questioned its
rise in Australian political thinking.
Dr Paul Smyth of the University�s Social Work and Social Policy
Department said he believed there had been inadequate Federal
government research on the social impacts of competition policy.
"The government documentation shows poor research and
unquestioned assumptions about the social benefits of economic
rationalism," he said.
Economic rationalism is an economic theory that relies on market
forces to determine outcomes in the economy.
Dr Smyth has spent the past 10 years researching the social
effects of economic rationalism, especially the Keating
employment and labour market reforms of the late 1980s and early
1990s for a book Contesting the Australian Way: States, Markets
and Civil Society. Dr Smyth and Professor Bettina Cass, Dean of
Arts at the University of Sydney, co-edited the book published
recently by Cambridge University Press.
He said the book discussed how successive governments ignored
the ways in which ordinary people were affected by restructures of
the Australian economy. These consequences included increased
unemployment levels and "insecure" employment.
His book also describes the difficulties he encountered while
researching the background leading to the government�s adoption
of the changes.
"I wanted to find out how dumb ideas get through government," he
said. "However, I was continually stonewalled while researching
government papers on the process."
[...]
