Blogotariat

By Sue Barrett How Powerful Industries and Individuals Exploit Taxpayer Money In a world where innovation and adaptability are supposed to drive success, certain industries and individuals have mastered the art of rent-seeking – leveraging government connections and taxpayer dollars to sustain their wealth and dominance. Instead of creating value or competing in a fair…

The post Rent-Seekers Draining Our Future appeared first on The AIM Network.

The battle is on to see which side of politics can boast of siphoning the most profits to the weapons industry – at the expense of health, education, climate and environmental action, and everything else we need – and of bowing more obsequiously before the US and its war machine.

If the site’s migration to a larger server wasn’t bumpy enough, then it was when disaster struck elsewhere. You’ve no doubt all noticed it: our homepage is but a bare skeleton (see above image). But first, some background. Ten years ago we paid a web developer a small fortune to build The AIMN. We liked…

The post It’s time for a facelift appeared first on The AIM Network.

The AEC published a fact sheet today with their estimates of margins for each electorate changed by the recently-completed federal redistributions.

There are a few pretty big differences between their estimates and my own, and I wanted to explain what I think is going on. The AEC were able to provide me with some of those estimates in advance to try and understand what is going on.

Asian stock markets are having staid sessions going into the end of the trading week with local stocks still selling off. The USD remains King against everything with the BOE hold as expectations for tonight’s PCE inflation print ramp up. The Kiwi and the Australian dollar remain under the pump as the Pacific Peso almost

The post Macro Afternoon appeared first on MacroBusiness.

CEFC winds up 2024 with record investment in two huge transmission projects, as Marinus reveals the cost for undersea cable has jumped again.

On Thursday, Statistics New Zealand released the national accounts for Q3 2024, which reported a 1.0% decline in GDP over the quarter to be 1.5% lower annually. As illustrated in the following table from major bank ASB, the result was far worse than economists, the market, and the Reserve Bank’s expectations. The result meant the

The post Deepening recession shocks Reserve Bank appeared first on MacroBusiness.

I noted earlier this week how the federal budget is facing a decade of deficits. The situation is even worse when off-budget spending is taken into account. The federal government will spend a record $90 billion “off-budget” over the next four years, a figure that is not captured in the underlying budget figures. This off-budget

The post The key problem facing the federal budget appeared first on MacroBusiness.

The AFR’s Ronald Mizen has published an article describing Australia’s broken ‘skilled’ visa system, which is importing many purportedly skilled workers who end up working in menial jobs such as driving Uber. The article profiles engineer Muhammad Ahsan Siddiqi, who migrated to Australia from Karachi in Pakistan in 2010 to drive Uber and work security.

The post Australia imports engineers to drive Uber appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Climate Council Media Release The Albanese Government’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) that will come into effect on January 1 will see cleaner and cheaper to run cars sold in Australia, cutting climate pollution produced by new cars by more than half. The policy is a huge win for our climate, our health and our…

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently released data on the value of the country’s residential housing stock. As of 30 September 2024, there were 11,252,600 residential dwellings worth $11,093.8 billion. This implied that the average Australian home was valued at $985,900. As of September 30, 2024, an estimated 27,368,029 Australians held a record-high $389,400

The post Australia’s wealth is an illusion appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Earlier this month, the ANU’s chief immigration propagandist, Alan Gamlen, claimed that “by March 2024, Net Overseas Migration (NOM) had added 31,000 fewer people to the population than it would have if migration had stayed at 2019 levels”. “Basically, NOM added 168,000 fewer people to Australia’s population between 2019 and 2024 than if NOM had

The post Australia ‘caught-up’ on immigration. What about housing? appeared first on MacroBusiness.