The Mellon Foundation and its peers have recently come under sustained attack for their role in radicalizing higher education. Headlines like “Mellon Foundation Awards Morgan State University $500,000 Grant to Cultivate the Next Generation of Black, LGBTQ+ Scholar-Activists” are now a dime a dozen. Notable contributors to this wave of critiques include Tao Tan, who put together data-driven analysis for the American Enterprise Institute on the effect of grants from private foundations, and Tyler Austin Harper, who wrote a withering profile of the Mellon Foundation for The Atlantic. These and other writers provide chapter and verse on how the financial incentives provided by Mellon and its lesser brethren have transformed America’s humanities and social science professors into leftist activists.
To revive higher education, tradition-minded philanthropists must play an essential role in reforming what radical philanthropists have tried their best to wreck. They should not attempt to create counter-Mellons, but instead provide professors with financial incentives to move away from radical activism. Mellon’s task was to radicalize a liberal establishment willing to be radicalized. Because it worked with the philosophical grain of the academy, its task was easier than what tradition-minded education reformers currently face.
If you drink beer, congratulations, you’re the backbone of the Australian economy! After all, that’s how politicians and the media describe the gas industry. But the truth is the federal government collects more money from the beer excise than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, as Independent ACT Senator David Pocock pointed out in Parliament, in an exchange that went viral.
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked why Australian beer drinkers pay more tax than gas export companies, the PM dodged the issue by accusing Senator Pocock of “promot[ing] grievance”.
If, like most Australians, you think Australia shouldn’t be giving away its gas for free, or that the gas industry should contribute more from its super profits tax than the beer excise, the Prime Minister seems to think you should stop whingeing about it. The real question is – why isn’t the Prime Minister aggrieved by this gas rip-off?
This past weekend, the United States launched Operation Epic Fury, a coordinated campaign with Israel that sent a wave of airstrikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran, targeting its military and infrastructure after decades of refusing to halt its nuclear program. In this effort to break the spine of a regime that has ruled through terror at home and violence abroad for nearly 50 years, a significant number of the regime’s top political and military leaders were killed, including the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It matters that the ayatollah did not simply expire naturally but was taken out by the United States. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s evil project of repression is well known across the West, along with its killing of Americans and regular chants of “death to America.” For decades, it has brutally crushed its own citizens and wreaked havoc worldwide through its proxies while Western countermeasures were marginally effective at best and enabled these actions at worst.
On this episode of After America, Allan Behm and Dr Emma Shortis discuss the US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the assassination of its leader, Trump and Netanyahu’s cynical messages for the Iranian people, what this war means for nuclear proliferation, and the Australian government’s “deeply disappointing” response.
This discussion was recorded on Monday 2 March 2026.
Our rights are not guaranteed. They are protected by laws — and laws can be weakened if politicians rollback our rights. In recent years, politicians have attempted to dilute or replace the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998. Conservative governments weakened and removed parts of the Equality Act, left key duties uncommenced, […]
In Quarterly Essay 100, Sean Kelly considers the enigma of the Albanese government. With wide yet shallow support, will it change the country? Does it have big ideas, or is it content just to become “the natural party of government”? Kelly gives a definitive account of Albanese’s political style and asks what lies behind it. In speaking to a fragmented, disengaged electorate, the Prime Minister places a high value on moderation. Often that means ducking fights with entrenched interests. But this runs the risk of embedding an ever more unequal nation, led by a government that can seem gutless. In this subtle and brilliant essay, Kelly explores whether Labor is still up for the good fight.
Sean joined Per Capita at our February 2026 John Cain Lunch. Watch the recording below.
The Trump II administration’s trade wars and framing of the dollar’s reserve status have accelerated concerns about the sustainability of the current monetary and trade system. Against a backdrop of various disintegrative tendencies, our new book Deweaponizing Interdependence: Bringing the Idea of International Clearing Union into the Twenty-First Century reintroduces the concept of an International Clearing Union (ICU) and offers an important overview of critical approaches to the prevailing monetary system.
The recent interest rate hike to address inflation drifting above the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target band has reignited debate about the Albanese Government’s economic management. Critics argue excessive government spending and the RBA’s initially slow response are to blame for rising prices and slower economic growth, despite the International Monetary Fund noting Australia is successfully managing a “soft” landing. New Liberal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has blamed increased government spending for inflation, stating there is ‘no ambiguity’ that the Coalition’s solution would be to cut spending growth and the public service by at least 36,000.
But what if the RBA had lifted interest rates far more aggressively and what if the Albanese Government had implemented deep spending cuts as some commentators and the Coalition advocate?
Wealth taxes don’t go far enough: Let’s transform our economy with public money Sheridan Kates Wealth taxes are crucial to build an economy that works for…
Because this is a blog post, not a law review article, I’ve refrained from formally footnoting it. At the end of the post there is an "Appendix", for those seeking further discussion of and citations to relevant judicial materials.
In New Mexico and the United States more generally, we the people are guaranteed rights to assemble and to express our views, free from government restraint. On March 28, when millions of people across the country will participate in No Kings events, they will live these rights. The medium will be a significant measure of the message: in America no government official may violate people’s civil rights, including their rights to assemble and express their views about democracy, rule of law, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Kenneth Rogoff Is (almost) right about the importance of inflation -but entirely wrong about its management Susan Borden America’s debt problem is not what Foreign…
A post-Keynesian discussion of US economic hegemony: resilience or decline? (Part 2) Alan Prout In Part 1 we listed some long-term factors that contribute to…
Empathy, morality, civilisation and resisting tyrants Geoff Davies Are we just selfish brutes who need to be civilised into social, moral behaviour? If not, where…
Uncertainty is central to Keynesian economics Steven Hail This item is extracted from Steven Hail’s 2018 book Economics for Sustainable Prosperity. The discussion relates to…
The Global Financial Crisis from a flawed neoclassical perspective Steve Keen This is a critique by Steve Keen of Lee Ohanian’s paper “The economic crisis…
Equations that mask inequality Barbara Williams Students of economics learn obedience to equations that mask inequality. That thought hit me while reading “The Justice Lie”…
Economics textbooks — scandalous intellectual dishonesty Lars Syll It is well-known that Keynes frequently criticised more traditional economics for committing the ‘fallacy of composition’. This…
Empathy, morality, civilisation and resisting tyrants Geoff Davies Are we just selfish brutes who need to be civilised into social, moral behaviour? If not, where…
Renewables over 50%, wholesale prices down – is the energy transition … succeeding? Tony Wood Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as January’s record-breaker…
Older people's privilege is based on a false sense of need or entitlement, but examples in this article show it is bad public policy, masks the fundamental inequality of class processes and perpetuates a problematic view of deserving and undeserving poor people.
Did you know that some of your favorite olive oil may come with a bitter colonial aftertaste? Allow me to explain. Tunisia is one of the world’s leading olive oil producers. In strong harvest years, it ranks among the top global producers and is consistently the largest producer outside the European Union. According to the International Olive Council (IOC), global olive oil production fluctuates between roughly 2.6 and 3.6 million tonnes depending on climatic cycles (IOC, January 2026). This year, thanks to decent rain season after years of droughts and heat waves, Tunisia’s production may reach half a million tonnes, placing it as the second largest producer globally behind Spain. Yet if you walk into a supermarket in Paris, Berlin, or New York, Tunisian brands are almost invisible. This is not a branding failure. It is the predictable outcome of the EU’s well-oiled colonial machine of global value chain hierarchies that plagues the Global South for decades.
Greetings, subscribers and future subscribers! Thank you for your thoughtful questions. They were mostly about Jeffrey Epstein and approached the topic from a number of angles. I tried to address them all.
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The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Overthrowing Nixon, ft. James Rosen | The Roundtable
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which was published 63 years ago this month, marked the beginning of the modern wave of American feminism. It has contributed perhaps more than any other radical ideology to the dissolution of traditional American culture and social order. This is a good moment to remind ourselves precisely how far out of touch with reality Friedan’s book is, as part of the ongoing effort to reclaim the culture it set out to demolish.
Based on interviews with her former Smith College classmates 15 years after graduating, Friedan’s book describes what she calls “the problem that has no name.” By this she meant a purportedly widespread perception that college-educated women believed their lives were crushingly unfulfilling, a problem that would require a complete re-envisioning of the family and the sexual division of labor to address.
However, among the book’s readers who were eager to accept Friedan’s critical diagnosis, few bothered to look closely enough to see that by her own analysis “the problem that has no name” should have been called “the problem that does not really exist except in the minds of a few discontented radicals like Betty Friedan.” She did not discover a problem—she simply found a way to interpret reality in a way sympathetic to her desires.
There are now “safe” Liberal and National seats where One Nation could do very well.
Labor, Greens and independent preferences will decide whether One Nation wins those seats – which means progressive voters have leverage over Liberals and Nationals desperate to hold their seats.
For decades, Australians in so-called “safe” seats have been told their votes do not matter, that they cannot influence the outcome of the election.
This myth was exploded four years ago when first-time community independents won a swathe of supposedly safe, “blue-ribbon” Liberal seats.
The success of these “teal” independents depended both on winning over former Liberal voters and securing preferences from progressive voters.
A seat is considered “safe” if the winner at the last election got 60 per cent or more of the vote (including preferences), “fair safe” if they got 56-60 per cent of the vote and “marginal” if they got less than 56 per cent of the vote.
On February 20, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against President Trump’s slate of tariffs that were enacted pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The decision cut across partisan lines, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Gorsuch and Barrett aligning with Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson over their dissenting colleagues, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. The outcome was immediately met with apoplectic reactions from administration supporters and barely contained glee from its critics. Republicans might have appointed a supermajority of the Court’s justices, but those justices will not simply rubber-stamp the president’s agenda.
This ruling represents something of a legal watershed. It is hard to envision a sharper divergence between the priorities of the current administration—and the broader New Right—and the mainstream conservative legal movement, which has shaped American jurisprudence for decades and produced the overwhelming majority of top-flight conservative jurists. The New Right has made a case for using executive power for the common good, a means of instantiating a wide-ranging policy agenda. Tariffs are a key component of that. But meanwhile, the dominant culture of the conservative legal movement remains deeply skeptical of executive branch authority and celebrates decisions that cripple administrative power.
Why am I pessimistic? Well, the problem with the Coalition isn’t just that they all want to be captain of the Titanic after it has struck the iceberg. The real problem is their policy solutions are rubbish.
Remember, there was no leadership speculation when Peter Dutton led the Coalition to last year’s historic election hammering.
The public didn’t reject the Liberals and Nationals because of internal fighting. They rejected them because they didn’t like their policies.
Dutton spent three years telling Australians that they were in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis (which was true). But when the election came around, the public could see how truly terrible the Coalition’s solutions were.
Does anyone remember the claims that nuclear, the most expensive form of electricity, was going to lower power bills?
On housing affordability, it was just as bad. Its big policy was to allow first-home buyers to drain their super accounts to buy a home. This would have been like a first-home buyers’ grant on steroids. The result would have been much higher house prices coupled with more Australians retiring in poverty.
So, will the new leadership team do any better? The early signs aren’t good.
One of the biggest supporters of the plan to use super to juice house prices was Tim Wilson. Angus Taylor has just appointed him shadow treasurer.
This past Friday, we finally got the macro headline a lot of us have been waiting on: the Supreme Court ruling on the IEEPA tariffs. The decision came down early Friday morning, and the court deemed the IEEPA tariffs illegal—effectively ending the version of the tariff regime that began on “Liberation Day” last year.
If you remember the mood a year ago, we were stepping into a chaotic policy experiment: a massive wave of tariffs, a lot of uncertainty, and a market trying to price the downstream effects in real time. Now, one year later, the original structure of those tariffs has been ruled unlawful.
But here’s the catch:
The end of the EPA tariffs doesn’t necessarily mean the end of tariff-driven damage. In fact, based on what followed, we may be walking into something that’s economically worse than what we just got rid of.
The Market Reaction: Calm… Then Chaos
The immediate market response to the Supreme Court decision was surprisingly muted. Friday’s session was fairly “meh” at first—there was a modest rally into the close, but nothing that screamed regime shift.
A detailed examination of data from the Reserve Bank and Australia’s National Accounts reveals that wage growth is not responsible for the recent uptick in inflation.
It concludes that the RBA’s latest interest rate hike not only fails to address the much bigger driver of inflation – surging company profits – but it blames the wrong culprit.
The end result is that young home buyers are being lumped with the burden of bringing inflation down.
The report highlights that the RBA’s own data clearly shows “non-wage sources” are responsible for rising inflation.
Furthermore, forecasts in the RBA’s February Statement of Monetary Policy suggest that the impact of wages on inflation will actually fall over the next year, while inflation keeps rising.
“Lifting interest rates to slow inflation is often referred to as a blunt instrument. In this instance, the blunt instrument is being used to smash the wrong culprit,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.
“The RBA’s own data makes it crystal clear that non-wage factors like massive corporate profits are driving inflation, not the meagre wage growth of workers.
“For many Australians, wages rises have been more than wiped out by interest rate rises – and certainly wiped out by price rises.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Skye discuss Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson’s call for tax cuts, why tariffs won’t be replacing income tax despite Donald Trump’s claims, Australia’s bizarre subsidies for fossil fuels, and why Greg reckons he wouldn’t take a tasty pay rise to go to the dark side.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 26 February 2026.
The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
The Trump Tariffs Go to Court | The Roundtable Ep. 306
5:00: am UPDATE: Questions are closed due to there being over 100! Thank you for participating and I’ll post the answers soon!
1:00 pm UPDATE: I’m reopening the comments so I can copy them over and organize them in the Q & A, and so folks can continue conversations. But I won’t be responding to any additional questions, just to what’s already here. Thanks!
3:00 pm UPDATE: I answered some of the more personal questions directly in the comments section! Check and see if you’ve been answered already. I’m leaving the more widely asked questions (Epstein!) for the Q & A.
Never in my years running this newsletter have I received as many emails asking “What is happening?” than in the last two weeks — so it’s time for another Q & A!
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Earlier this month, the Cato Institute—perhaps the most effective think tank advocating for open borders—published a study claiming that since 1994, immigration has generated a whopping $14.5 trillion surplus in tax revenues over expenditures.
However, it was quickly pointed out that Cato’s study relies on strange notions of what ought to count in making immigration policy. For example, while acknowledging that immigration raises housing prices by increasing demand, the study views the increased property taxes paid by all residential property owners—citizens and noncitizens alike—as a benefit of that increased demand.
But perhaps more fundamental is the study’s notion of what should count as an expenditure on immigrants. It treats the educational and medical expenses of immigrants’ American-born children—all of whom Cato claims are “birthright citizens”—as expenditures on citizens rather than on immigrants. This is the same kind of sleight of hand we saw during COVID, when the rise in illness experienced after the first of two shots was counted as cases among the unvaccinated rather than the half-vaccinated.
The LITO is an automatic tax refund – currently capped at $700 per year – which low-income earners receive when they lodge their tax returns.
Increasing the cap to $3000 would ensure the nation’s lowest-income earners stay ahead of inflation. Those earning between $32,000 and $46,000 would receive a tax cut of more than $2,000 per year.
The reforms would help those who’ve been hit hardest by inflation: workers and families whose nominal wages may have risen, but whose real wages have fallen, as a result of surging prices, particularly on essentials like food, energy and rent.
The analysis shows the cost of increasing the LITO would be $11.98 billion per year. This revenue could be replaced with a gas export tax – as suggested by the ACTU – which could raise $17 billion.
Recent polling also shows widespread support across party lines for a 25% tax on gas exports, with particularly strong support among One Nation and Greens voters.
One Nation yesterday announced a policy to charge the gas industry royalties, while Independent Senator David Pocock threw his support behind a 25% gas export tax.
“This is the engine room of the cost-of-living crisis – the current tax settings mean that Australian families on low incomes are not keeping up with price rises,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.
