The complete ERA Review is available in pdf form to members. We welcome your comments in the comments section.
Volume 14 No.6 November – December 2022
Contents
Interest rate hikes will hurt workers to protect profits (Part 2)
The RBA needs to understand, and hear, the voices and preferences of every Australian, not just financiers and employers
Anis Chowdhury
Our electricity system – a tragedy of the commons
Sooner or later we will be obliged to recognise that the tragedy of the commons applies to any public service monopoly that is opened to corporate ‘grazing’
Colin Cook
Good news – there’s a clean energy gold rush under way
We’ll need it to tackle energy price chaos and coal’s exodus; the benefits are huge – abundant and cheap power, generated locally and in flourishing regions
Bjorn Sturmberg
The magnitude of the required reductions Extracted from an article by Ted Trainer
Many studies show that despite constant effort to improve productivity and efficiency the growth of GDP continues to be accompanied by growth in resource use.
RWER Editor
Last exit to the road less travelled
We need to confront the danger of progressing along a smooth superhighway at great speed, the end of which presents disaster
J.D. Alt
The use and abuse of MMT (Part 1)
The positive function of budget deficits is to spend money and provide income within the production and consumption sectors, not the financial and property markets.
Michael Hudson, Dirk Bezemer, Steve Keen, Sabri Öncü
Contradictions of the hydrogen economy
Hydrogen can be used in fuel cells to produce electrical power at nearly twice the efficiencies of fossil fuel turbines
Greg Reid
The Nobel Prize for mediocrity and irrelevance
The problem is that Bernanke relied on the neoclassical theory that banks act as simple intermediaries between savers and borrowers
Steve Keen
The primary driver of environmental degradation
Ongoing and unrestrained economic growth
Jonathan Miller
The market has failed to give Australians affordable housing
We need more government investment in public and community housing
H Pawson, W Randolph, C Leishman, N Gurran, P Mares, P Phibbs, V Milligan
Volume 14 No.5 September – October 2022
Contents
ERA’s new patron, Prof Stephanie Kelton
Stephanie is a heterodox economist and one of the world’s leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory
Editor
Interest rate hikes will not save us from inflation
Instead of making money harder to get, governments should focus on supply rather than demand
Ellen Brown
Summary of Bill Mitchell’s update on Australian inflation
The major sources of price increases are temporary, and adequate fiscal support for suffering families is required
Editor
RBA wage growth predictions
RBA wage price index forecasts for 2011-2017
Editor
Raising interest rates is like blowing up the garden to weed it
Inflation can be addressed by rebuilding our energy and transport systems
Dirk Ehnts, Sten Grahn, Peo Hansen, Jussi Ora, Patrik Witkowsky
Interest rate hikes will hurt workers to protect profits (Part 1)
Interest rate hikes will hurt families who played no role in the current bout of inflation
Anis Chowdhury
It is critical that the housing bubble is safely deflated
An ingenious way out of the debt trap we’ve been steered into by ideologically misguided economic management
Geoff Davies
There is no invisible hand
Extracted by Lars Syll
Good science recognises its limitations, but the prophets of rational expectations have usually shown no such modesty
Joseph Stiglitz
Why Are We Kneecapping the Recovery?
Synchronized policies of retrenchment amount to a deliberate and coordinated
effort to kneecap the economic recovery
Stephanie Kelton
The national electricity market is a failed 1990s experiment
It’s time the grid returned to public hands
John Quiggin
The Deadly Wisdom of Economics
Neoclassical economists know nothing about the impact of energy availability on GDP
Steve Keen
Volume 14 No.4 July – August 2022
Contents
Central banks hunt in packs. Here’s why ours ought to be wary about lifting the cash rate
The RBA should tread carefully
Steven Hail
Net zero by 2050 will hit a major timing problem technology can’t solve
We need to talk about cutting consumption
Mark Diesendorf
Beyond electric cars: how electrifying trucks, buses, tractors and scooters will help tackle climate change
Focusing on all transport modes will make cities more equitable, safe and sustainable
Peter Newman
When will ‘economic growth’ account for environmental costs?
Areas requiring action must be coherently integrated
David Shearman
The Genuine Progress Indicator
Required because GDP growth does not correlate well with changes in social welfare
Editor
Study identifies outdoor air pollution as the ‘largest existential threat to human and planetary health’
Deaths and the economic impacts from exposure to pollution are not inconsiderable
Victoria St Martin
Mainstream economics: Sacrificing realism at the altar of mathematical purity
Disciplines that abut and illuminate economics have been too often neglected
By Lars Syll from comments of Andrew Haldane
University departments of economics are degraded to political propaganda centres
A pluralistic strategy at university departments of economics is the only realistic approach
Peter Söderbaum
Inflation, wages, and profits
Debate about inflation is actually a debate about profits, which is in the end a debate about capitalism
David Ruccio
Great and rising inequality
The world’s richest one percent have more than twice the wealth of 6.9 billion of the world’s population
Jamie Morgan
A brief history of Economic Reform Australia
Editor
NSW’s biggest coal mine to close in 2030
Now what about the workers? A cooperative & inclusive plan is essential
Liam Phelan, Kimberly Crofts
Volume 14 No.3 May – June 2022
Contents
Study warns of ‘profound’ consequences as the Amazon nears a ‘tipping point’
Lost rainforest resiliency imperils biodiversity, carbon storage, and the climate at a global scale
Brett Wilkins
Degrowth is not recession, nor is it austerity
It aims to ensure the wellbeing of citizens via the provision of essential services
Erin Remblance
The Job Guarantee and Basic Income: Pt 2
Under the NAIRU system the number of unskilled workers needing assistance increases, thus reducing their potential spending power
Ellis Winningham
The social cost of neoliberalism
Our common good is enhanced when cooperative participation and ordinary people’s needs are prioritized
Editor
Reducing Material Consumption through Economic and Social Transformation
A summary of Timothy Redfern’s strategy for reduced material consumption, applicable to the OECD countries
Elinor Hurst
Graduate Studies in the Economics of Sustainability
Modern Money Lab and Torrens University are to launch a suite of Graduate programs in Modern Monetary Theory and Ecological Economics
Editor
To really address climate change, Australia could generate 27 times as much electricity and from renewable sources
Australia has an opportunity to contribute to global net-zero emissions via clean exports
Paul Burke, Emma Aisbett, Ken Baldwin
Amid talk of budget deficits, here are lessons we should have learnt
Interest rate hikes are not the best way to suppress inflation
Steven Hail
Australia plans to be a big green hydrogen exporter to Asian markets – but they don’t need it
Andrew Blakers, Cheng Cheng
Time’s up: why Australia has to quit stalling and wean itself off fossil fuels
We’ve run out of time to deal with global heating, and cannot afford more years of inaction
John Quiggin
Impulsive psychopaths like crypto
Research shows how ‘dark’ personality traits affect Bitcoin enthusiasm
Di Wang, Brett Martin, Jun Yao
Volume 14 No.2 March-April 2022
Contents
Don’t look up! has a surprising amount to tell us about economics, much of it useful
Both the resources and the technology needed for deflecting metaphorical comets already exist
Stephen Hail
Real Economies, Faux Economics and the Destruction of Universities
Academic disciplines that maintain integrity of scholarship should be aware of a fraudulent strain in their midst
Geoff Davies
Life in a degrowth economy and why you’ll love it
We can choose either degrowth, or collapse with business as usual
Erin Remblance
A review of “Herman Daly’s ‘Economics for a Full World’: His life and ideas”
– a biography by Peter Victor
Matthew Washington
Ideological engineering for the top one percent
Extracted from the book: Finance as Warfare, by Michael Hudson
RWER Editor
Inland rail project (from: White elephant watch)
Let’s put inland rail in the deep freeze
John Quiggin
What really makes people happy?
Happiness is influenced by economic inequality, social capital and the quality of our institutions
Elinor Hurst
Norway’s recent EV numbers: 84% of new car sales are all-electric
Extracted from: The Driven, 3 Feb 2022
Editor
The Job Guarantee and Basic Income: Part 1
The purpose of the Job Guarantee in MMT is to act as an automatic stabiliser
Ellis Winningham
Jobs and decarbonisation: How Australia can manage the transition
Communities must lead the response
Jeremy McEachern, Warwick Smith
Wise words from William Vickrey
As quoted by Lars Syll
Editor
Our obsession with economic growth will destroy us
Our acquisitive societies refuse to recognise there are limits to growth
Ted Trainer
A modern money perspective on deficit spending
All real economic activities depend on a functioning financial machinery
Lars Syll
Volume 14 No.1 January-February 2022
Contents
The anti-colonial politics of degrowth
High-income countries are the primary drivers of global ecological breakdown
Jason Hickel
‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist
Less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe
George Monbiot
Time we stopped listening to economists on climate change
Mainstream economic models of climate change are badly flawed
Jag Bhalla
Vale Geoff Harcourt
Steve Keen
Geoff Harcourt’s legacy
Wayne McMillan
Frederick Soddy, polymath and economic reformer
Most of his reform proposals were radical in his day but are now standard practice
Editor
What is austerity?
Extracted from a Facebook posting
Ellis Winningham
Much of Economics is a Sham Science
Survival is threatened if we imagine economics is an ethics-free and care-free sphere
Julie Nelson
Economists seem unaware of the impending climate crisis
Our current population may have reached its viable limit
David Shearman
Confusion reigns
Until recently, economic orthodoxy was out of step with reality, but with insufficient disruption to show it clearly
Peter Radford
How is the U.S. going to pay its huge debt?
From the Quora knowledge platform
Editor
Why does inflation not follow the money supply?
From the Quora knowledge platform
Editor
