This is why employers hesitate to hire new staff. Wrongful termination applications from employees have increased by 126% since the Rudd government established the Fair Work Commission in 2009:
That’s from our new report Fair Work and the Right to Work, authored by IPA Research Fellow Gideon Rozner, released on Monday. On Wednesday the IPA released our newest video, ‘Why we should repeal the Fair Work Act‘:
But it’s not just in Australia where labour regulations are hurting workers – a University of Washington study this month has found that a minimum wage increase from $11 to $13 in Seattle has reduced the hours worked by low wage workers by 9% and cost them $125 a month. Megan McArdle covered the study in an excellent article in Bloomberg View on Tuesday.
South Australia’s proposed bank levy is “an outrageous act of economic vandalism“, said the IPA’s Professor Sinclair Davidson in his media release on Friday. As Simon Breheny argued in The Australian on Monday, a bank tax is just about the last thing the state needs.
Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America is being feted by the left in the US. We’re obviously not convinced. Cato’s Dan Mitchell called it a “taxpayer-funded smear job” of Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan, and Russ Roberts explained at Medium why the author owes Tyler Cowen an apology. For a thorough and scathing review of the book, you should read this from the Library of Law and Liberty on Tuesday.
If you ever wanted to know the science (or lack thereof) behind so-called microaggressions, look no further. In this 4,600 word essay at Aeon on Tuesday, clinical psychologist Scott Lilienfeld explained how the “evidence for harm caused by microaggression is incoherent, unscientific and weak“.
Jeremy Corbyn was ecstatically welcomed at the Glastonbury festival on Saturday where he mocked Trump for his climate change policies. Festival goers then promptly showed their respect for the environment and left a £785,000 garbage bill in the rural Somerset park.
If you’re in Melbourne this weekend, check out the Australia and New Zealand Students for Liberty annual conference featuring excellent speakers including the IPA’s Brett Hogan, Chris Berg, and Professor Jason Potts. Details here.
Article of the week:
In this excellent article on National Review Online on Tuesday, Victor Davis Hanson explains that progressives need Trump Derangement Syndrome because their own ideas don’t win elections.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: John Roskam
Set aside 43 minutes and listen to this brilliant podcast from Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics fame who interviews the billionaire libertarian Charles Koch. Koch explains how history demonstrates that free markets are the surest way to promote human flourishing, and also why Bill Clinton was a better president than Richard Nixon or George W Bush.
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- John Roskam, Why the Libs will never GetUp! – The Australian Financial Review
- Sinclair Davidson, Is that tax policy or slapstick comedy? – The Spectator Australia
- Sinclair Davidson, Central bank has a strange idea of how to strengthen the economy – The Australian Financial Review
- Daniel Wild, Review of climate change policies – IPA Research Paper
- Sinclair Davidson, How Howard’s great GST bargain got trashed by Canberra – The Australian Financial Review
- Daniel Wild, Why bank taxes are always a bad idea – Sky News
