IPA Review-January 2014

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Researcher at the IPA, James Bolt. Once someone discovers they can repeat words really well, and that they can engage an audience with their repetition, they call themselves an ‘actor’. Once they start to believe we’re still interested in lines they thought of themselves, usually about politics and

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Ian Mence Fellow for Entrepreneurship at the IPA, Dom Talimanidis. In 1983, Peter Drucker wrote ‘it is [Joseph] Schumpeter who will shape the thinking and inform the questions on economic policy for the rest of this century, if not the next thirty or fifty years.’ George Gilder would agree.

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Research Fellow at the IPA, Richard Allsop. There is no doubt that Nick Greiner was one of the best premiers of any Australian state in the second half of the twentieth century. The New South Wales Government he led from 1988 to 1992 introduced a range of worthwhile

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Research Fellow at the IPA, Julie Novak. One of the great legacies of Western Civilisation has been the emergence of the philosophical doctrine of liberalism (sometimes referred to today as libertarianism). The evolution of the key philosophical themes of liberalism, warts and all, is the subject of an

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Director of Policy at the IPA, Chris Berg. Enthusiasts of Ancient Roman history have long been struck by a peculiar absence. As David Hume wrote, ‘I do not remember a passage in any ancient author, where the growth of a city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture.’

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Author of the bestselling book ‘The Rational Optimist’, Matt Ridley. Woody Allen once said that ‘we stand at a cross-roads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.’ All too often

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Research Scholar with the IPA, Stephanie Forrest. The education minister Christopher Pyne has promised to review the Gillard Government’s National History Curriculum. But the curriculum doesn’t need to be reviewed. It needs to be scrapped. The hostility towards the legacy of Western Civilisation in the National Curriculum’s history subject demonstrates

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Director or the Deregulation Unit at the IPA, Dr Alan Moran. The carbon tax was the tombstone of the ALP’s 2013 election policy platform. But it is only one of a family of measures providing nutrition for the crusade by numerous scientists, officials, university lecturers and renewable energy

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Research Fellow at the IPA, Dr Julie Novak. Despite the unambiguous gains in living standards among developed countries over the last three decades, several economists have recently speculated that our future economic outlook may decidedly be less rosy. In a paper written last year with the ominous title

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Research Fellow at the IPA, Dr Julie Novak. In October every year a group of non-profits and social reformers commemorate ‘Anti-Poverty Week’, to raise awareness of poverty in Australia. This year Tim Costello labelled Australia as ‘a land of paradox, and one of the enduring paradoxes is the

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Director of Policy at the IPA, Chris Berg. A great idea can change the world. But so can a terrible one. And all ideas need their advocates. In this list we’ve chosen the dirty dozen of Australian opponents of freedom: the most energetic, aggressive, influential, and outright offensive

This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Editor James Paterson. Two articles in this edition of the IPA Review appear to be starkly contradictory. On the one hand, the IPA’s Julie Novak writes on page 12 that everything is getting better. Living standards in Australia have dramatically increased over the past three decades as consumer