My big news this month was the publication of a letter in the New York Times, responding to a piece advocating higher birth rates. It almost certainly had more readers than any of my journal articles. You can read it here.
A lot of my time this month was taken up by the “Productivity Roundtable” to be held later in August. The official title is “Economic Reform Roundtable’, which is rather depressing given the failure of decades of neoliberal measures marketed as “reform”. I prepared, or contributed to, a bunch of submissions, steering clear of the well-trodden ground of tax policy, where I have nothing new to say at the moment.
First, I contributed to a submission by the Cleaner Air Collective, arguing for improvements in indoor air quality as a response to continuing productivity losses arising from Covid-19.
With Bruce Chapman and Arie Freiberg, I put in a submission reviving our idea of an income-contingent mechanism for collecting fines. The big appeal for me is the idea that the debt would be discharged after a fixed period of time, ensuring that low-income offenders are not burdened with indefinite liabilities. That in turn would enable higher fines to be levied on offenders with the means to repay them, reducing reliance on high-cost measures like imprisonment and community service for relatively minor offences.
Finally I submitted a case for digital sovereignty, which I previously published on my Substack Blog.
In sporting terms, my attention is focused on the Sunshine Coast 70.3 Ironman (1.9km swim, 90km cycle, 21.1 km run) to be held in mid-September. I barely made it inside the 8 hour cutoff time last year, so unless I can improve, this might be my last attempt at this distance. I’ve been training hard, though still not as much as I would like.
As a preparation for race conditions, I ran in the 10km event of the Sunshine Coast Marathon Festival on 1 August. I was focused on maintaining a steady and comfortable pace, rather than racing, but I was still pleased with my time of 56:01.
Newspaper articles
Sorry, America, but it’s not Australia’s fault that your healthcare system is failing you Guardian 1 August
Are pro-natalists living on the same planet? Inside Story 30 June
Media
My July media report is here (password quiggin). Thanks as usual to Alysha Hiluevo for preparing this.
Visit my Substack blog
Read my comic book presentation of The Perils of Privatisation. Paid subscribers to the blog get a free physical copy.