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Volume 16 No.6 November – December 2024
Contents
How low can we go?
To cut the carbon that goes into buildings to net zero, we need radical change.
P Oldfield, G Reinmuth, W Craft
Recommended book: The Big Myth, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
Sustainability scientists challenge the dominant economic system
Neoclassical economics fails to describe the behaviour of the real economies of industrial society
Mark Diesendorf
Recommended paper: Sustainability Scientists’ Critique of Neo-classical Economics
We recommend that neoclassical microeconomics be reformed and neoclassical macroeconomics abandoned.
M Diesendorf, G Davies, T Wiedmann, J Spangenberg, Steven Hail
Recommended paper: How the Taxpayer Myth Gives Life to the Neo-liberal Agenda
Removing the taxpayers’ money narrative
Eric Tymoigne
Coal-free in 14 years as renewables rush in
New blueprint shows how to green the grid – without going nuclear.
Dylan McConnell
Escaping the jungle: Rethinking land ownership for a sustainable future
Moving beyond the capitalist jungle with a more human and humane world where land is managed for the benefit of all
Asad Zaman
Why the UK can’t afford Rachel Reeves
Abolishing the winter fuel payment is bad politics, bad ethics and bad economics
Steve Keen
Hyman Minsky, and the financial instability hypothesis
Why our economy goes up, up, up, and then down, down, down!
Steven Hail
We can’t have billionaires and stop climate change
When it comes to ecological impact, we know that the richer you are, the more damage you do. This pattern is evident over a wide range of indicators.
Jason Hickel
Volume 16 No.5 September – October 2024
Contents
Trying to save money? Our research suggests it is better to pay in cash – while you still can
Consumer spending is higher for bank credit payments, compared to cash transactions.
Lachlan Schomburgk, Alex Belli, Arvid Hoffmann
Chinese electric vehicles are transforming Australia’s car market
Are we getting a good deal? Electric motor vehicle growth will benefit the Australian economy, and help achieve net zero targets.
Sanjoy Paul, Priyabrata Chowdhury
When it comes to power, solar is about to leave nuclear – and everything else – in the shade
Record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is lowering electricity prices.
Peter Martin
Small modular reactors have promise. But we found they’re unlikely to help Australia hit net zero by 2050
Australia’s clean energy transition is underway – driven by solar, wind, pumped hydro, batteries and new transmission lines. It remains to be seen whether SMRs will find a useful niche.
Ian Lowe, Kylie Walker
An alternative alternative economics; How socially engaged Buddhism compares with established heterodox schools
A comparison of four prominent heterodox schools of economic thought with socially engaged Buddhism.
Nick Johnson
“Economics”, our master narrative manufacturing our demise
Mainstream economic narratives are in a battle with strongly resisting heterodox counter-narratives.
Richard Parker
Universal public services: the power of decommodifying survival
Research on degrowth and climate mitigation indicates that universal public services are crucial to a just and effective transition.
Jason Hickel
In a free market, drugs are cheap; Government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive
The US pharmaceutical industry is raking in unreasonably large profits with government blessing.
Dean Baker
An interconnected economic reality – Part 2
Discussion of dynamic change and the foundations of complexity in economics and modelling.
Dennis Venter
Volume 16 No.4 July – August 2024
Contents
Complex economies embedded in the biosphere with the commons restored part 2
How can we construct an economics consistent with the biophysical limits to economic growth?
Geoff Davies
Capitalism – with friends like these, you don’t need enemies – part 2
Many economists lack knowledge about the physical nature of production, and cannot accept that climate change could be a serious threat to capitalism.
Steve Keen
Where did money come from?
Early governments invented the very institutions of money and markets, and the regulatory frameworks that determined how those markets work and in whose interests.
Steven Hail
The future is not evenly distributed
China has exploited deficit spending, in ways consistent with MMT insights, to create advantages that are rapidly propelling that nation far ahead.
Greg Reid
Global warming and the threat of cheap Chinese EVs
Countries in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia could benefit from low-cost electric vehicles as well as solar panels, batteries and other items needed for a transition to a green economy.
Dean Baker
Advantages and applications of sodium-ion batteries
After three decades of development, sodium-ion batteries are at a critical moment of commercialization.
Editor
An interconnected economic reality – part 1
Rethinking the economics curriculum
Dennis Venter
Labour productivity and real wages: An update
Across the whole economy, a gap remains between growth in real wages and labour productivity.
Wayne McMillan
Wind, solar and pumped hydro are all we need, and cheaper
Renewable sources can provide all the electrical energy we need, on demand, cheaper than fossil or nuclear options, more quickly, and with minimal carbon emissions.
Geoff Davies
Volume 16 No.3 May – June 2024
Contents
Complex economies embedded in the biosphere with the commons restored – Part 1
How can we construct an economics consistent with the biophysical limits to economic growth?
Geoff Davies
‘New Keynesian’ unemployment — a paid vacation essentially!
New Keynesian models cannot explain unemployment
Lars Syll
MMT sees America through rapid economic recovery
The causes of the inflation are disproportionately supply-side and temporary
Stephanie Kelton & Steven Hail
Capitalism – with friends like these, you don’t need enemies (part 1)
Labour without energy is a corpse, while capital without energy is sculpture
Steve Keen
If you’ve got a dark roof, you’re spending almost $700 extra a year to keep your house cool
Communities will keep paying dearly for the luxury of a dark roof through power bill pain and sweltering suburbs.
Sebastian Pfautsch & Riccardo Paolini
Rethinking economics with Angus Deaton
Economists could benefit by greater engagement with the ideas of philosophers, historians, and sociologists, just as Adam Smith once did
Editor
Mortgagees paying for corporate price gouging
Systematic profit pushed through price gouging exists across all the major sectors of the economy
Editor
No economy exists apart from the ecologies which sustain it
All wealth in the end is ecological
Peter Newell
A successful energy transition requires managing power use; so how do we make demand more flexible?
With more variable supply from solar and wind energy, demand flexibility is a cheaper and cleaner way to keep the electricity grid stable
Chris Briggs
Letter from Colin Cook (SA)
Land – funding and inflation
Re: Finding the tools to end the cost-of-living crisis [ERA Review Jan/Feb 2024]
Volume 16 No.2 March – April 2024
Contents
With one word, economics lurched into fantasy
Human society is energy blind
Steve Keen
Rooftop solar could help provide the power we need
Clean energy projects are too slow to reach the 82% renewable electricity target by 2030
Anna Bruce, Baran Yildiz, Dani Alexander, Mike Roberts
Ecological economics and modern monetary economics need each other
We do not operate a fractional reserve system, nor do banks lend the money they create to their central bank
Steven Hail and Philip Lawn
Rethinking banking as a public franchise
Offering economists a more accurate metaphor.
Tom Foster
A future threat has become a present reality and time is against us
We are on the clock and time is against us
Jamie Morgan
“Complexity” in economics
Economics should adopt a variation of the complex systems approaches now available
Maria Alejandra Madi
Letters: From Dr Ted Trainer – What is sustainable development?
Battery prices are falling again
And that’s a good thing
Dan Gearino
Lessons from Australia in solving Argentina’s economic crisis
With Argentina facing dire economic challenges, Steven Hail offers recommendations for recovery based on lessons learnt from Australia’s fiscal mistakes
Steven Hail
Volume 16 No.1 January – February 2024
Contents
What is sustainable development?
In the 21st century the need for carefully planned sustainable development has become acute, and requires overcoming the neoliberal economic system.
Mark Diesendorf
Choosing unemployment: what of job seekers? – part 2
Unemployment is a choice made by governments, corporations and central banks.
John Haly
The road is long and time is short, but Australia’s pace towards net zero is quickening
Australia has an enormous opportunity in decarbonising quickly, in a world that wants the same.
Anna Skarbek
Recommended new film: Finding the money
Extracts from an article by Steven Hail, about a new economic school of thought that has been born and is gaining traction
Editor
The magnificent failure of mainstream economics
Reflections on economic mismanagement and the 2008 global collapse into the greatest
economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Steve Keen
Amendment of the climate change Act will offer a future for young people
The young are increasingly anxious about climate change and the perpetration of misinformation and disinformation on social media.
David Shearman
Finding the tools to end the cost of living crisis
Finding an end to the cost of living crisis will depend on modern economic theories rather than current outdated monetary models.
Steven Hail
