G'day all,
Yesterday, Australian Treasurer and Prime Minister-in-Waiting Peter Costello
gave a long and (inevitably) simplistic speech on the virtues and
inevitabilities of globalisation (I won't repeat it - you can pretty well
imagine it verbatim). Tonight Jamie Galbraith graced SBS TV's Insight
programme, (he's here on a lecture visit) quietly and clinically put every
'point' Costello had made to the sword. He actually claimed (and it's the
first time an economist-on-the-telly has said it in my hearing) that not only
inequality but also poverty has been growing world-wide since the era of
Keynesian 'managed globalisation'. He called for reregulation, pointing to
the trend to private monopoly that follows privatisation, and made much of the
lesson afforded us by the Californian electricity episode. And he came down
heavily against indirect taxation (the salient policy triumph of Howard's
government) on equity grounds.
Interestingly, he came down more heavily still on Bush's tax cuts, predicting
significant social service/infrastructure shortfalls in light of suddenly
diminishing public revenue projections. What say you, Alex?
Anyway, Jamie apparently sometimes looks in on PEN-L, and I'll take this
opportunity to thank him for sounding like absolutely noone else in Ozzie's
TV-Pundit Land. Good on you, mate!
Cheers,
Rob
