The RBA’s sustained low interest rate policy has not worked. Business investment in Australia remains lower than even the Whitlam years:
As Daniel Wild wrote in the August edition of the IPA Review, pushing interest rates towards zero cannot fix “the collapse of the supply-side of Australia’s economy“. Cutting red tape and reducing Australia’s high corporate tax rate is essential.
Remember when NBA star LeBron James called President Trump a “bum” and tweeted Dr Martin Luther King’s “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere“? This week he said that Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey ” wasn’t educated ” when Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters. I guess justice is only important to LeBron when it doesn’t cost him any of his $450 million fortune.
Nick Cave has joined Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and many others in rejecting wokeness. This week on his blog The Red Hand Files he wrote that woke culture “finds its energy in self-righteous belief and the suppression of contrary systems of thought” and that the left has consigned freedom of speech to its “ever expanding ideological junk pile”.
Here’s some advice for New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s “wellbeing budget” – be more like Margaret Thatcher! Scientists at Warwick and Glasgow universities and the Alan Turing Institute scanned 4 million books and tens of millions of newspaper articles and found that Britons became happier after Thatcher was elected in 1979.
The Australian has a special deal for IPA members – 30% off tickets for ‘Strategic Forum: navigating the east-west divide‘ in Sydney on Monday 18 November. The Forum examines the impact of escalating tensions between China and the US and features Paul Keating, Josh Frydenberg, and others.
On Sunday, Stand up for Nuclear events are happening in 33 cities all over the world to lift humans out of poverty and protect the natural environment. Renee Gorman will be speaking at the Australian event in Melbourne – details here.
The H.R. Nicholls Society Conference and Ray Evans Memorial Oration featuring Senator Eric Abetz, the IPA’s Kurt Wallace and others is Saturday 9 November in Melbourne. Details here.
Article of the week:
Literary critic and champion of the Western Canon Harold Bloom died on Monday. This in-depth obituary in The Guardian says “no American literary critic had reached so wide an audience” and “Bloom magisterially reaffirmed the centrality of the great works of literature in western culture”. Scott Hargreaves featured Bloom’s The Books and Schools of the Ages in the IPA’s 100 Great Books of Liberty.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Dr Aaron Lane
This week our friends at the American Institute for Economic Research, in conjunction with the producers of the Keynes vs. Hayek rap battles, released the long-awaited third instalment: “The March of History: Mises vs. Marx – The Definitive Capitalism vs. Socialism Rap Battle.” It delivers what it promises: a ten-minute masterful Austrian critique of Marxism. I’ll be showing this in my next economics lecture. (Click here for Keynes vs Hayek round 1 and here for round 2).
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- John Roskam, Identity politics thrives on the ideas that divide us – The Australian Financial Review
- Daniel Wild, Freedom is not a government gift – The Australian
- Andrew Bushnell, Sydney motorists do not want a congestion tax – The Daily Telegraph
- John Roskam, The danger of religious discrimination laws – ABC Friday Fix
- Daniel Wild, Andrew Bushnell and Dr Zachary Gorman, Asset-owning democracy strengthens mainstream Australia – Media Release
