I’ve avoided post-mortems on the US election disaster for two reasons.
First, they are useless as a guide to the future. The next US election, if there is one [1], will be a referendum on the Trump regime. Campaign strategies that might have gained the Democrats a few percentage points in November 2024 won’t be at all relevant in 2026 or 2028, let alone in the aftermath of a regime collapse further in the future.
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I wrote this for a Guardian panel. The published version was cut for space reasons, so here’s the full version
Last week, I gave a presentation at the 2024 Australian Basic Income Fellows Workshop. Most of the talks were about Basic Income trials, which have been undertaken around the world. I focused on something more modest but perhaps more achievable: getting evidence on the effects of Scrapping or Scaling Back Mutual Obligation and Income Management.
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
What can Americans do? What should Australia do?
A few weeks ago, I drew up a flowchart to estimate the probability that Trump would establish a dictatorship in the US, which looked, at the time, like an even money bet.
The Great War continues, more than 100 years later
Yesterday was November 11, the anniversary of the armistice which ended fighting on the Western Front of what was then called the Great War. It’s always an occasion for sad reflection on my part, thinking about the pointlessness of the massive sacrifices of the War, which achieved nothing except to set the scene for worse disasters to come.
Back in 1947, the standard Australian working week was reduced from 44 hours to 40. In 1983, 36 years later, the working week was reduced to 38 hours. That was more than 40 years ago, and there has been a lot of technological progress since then. It makes sense to take some of the benefits of that progress in the form of shorter working hours.