Incoming Feed Items

Political Economy Seminar

Class, Party, and American Politics in 2024

Speaker: Matthew Karp, Princeton University

Time and date: Friday, 2 August 2024, 4-5:30 pm

Location: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney

Abstract: It may be the most pervasive question in twenty-first century politics, all across the post-industrial world: Why have so many working-class voters, the backbone of socialist and progressive struggles across the twentieth century, turned away from parties of the left? Everyone from Thomas Piketty to J.D. Vance seems to have weighed in, but the debate rages on. This talk explores the emergence of what some call “class dealignment” in the United States, focusing especially on the last two decades, and evaluating the current shape of both the Republican and Democratic political coalitions. Drawing on my work with the Center for Working Class Politics, I argue that dealignment represents an existential crisis for the American left and suggest some ways left-wing politicians might push back against these macro trends.

The 17th Annual E.L. ‘Ted’ Wheelwright Lecture

Dollar Hegemony as Law-Making Power, or How the Dollar Shapes the Rules of Global Capitalism

Speaker: Ntina Tzouvala (ANU)

Date and time: Thursday 12 September, doors open 5:30 pm, lecture 6-8 pm

Location: Social Sciences Building A02, Lecture Theatre 200, University of Sydney

Registrations: https://events.humanitix.com/17th-annual-wheelwright-lecture

Lecture abstract

I recently had the good fortune to enjoy five weeks in Australia, visiting family and exploring an amazing country up and down the east coast, from Hobart and Melbourne in the south to as far ‘north’ as Brisbane (I am from Canada’s Yukon, so I use that term guardedly), not to mention several points in between. And while doing all that, it was impossible to resist the urge to contact colleagues at a number of universities to see whether they would like to hear their old friend speak to his current research. I was blown away by the response, not only in terms of the enthusiasm to entertain a Canadian in their midst, but also at the critical and engaged reception to my research. Interest in the field of International Political Economy (IPE) is more than alive and well ‘down under’; it is flourishing. Whatever the current travails of higher education in Australia, the scholars who make up its IPE (and IR) community are in robust shape. As a result, while it may take me a little longer to finish my book (sad face emoji), the end result will be a stronger manuscript and a more engaging contribution to the discipline of IPE. Thank you Australia!

Earlier this year in Davos, the new Argentinian President, Javier Milei, defended what he called “libertarianism”, a model characterised, according to him, by “private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation(…)”.

From a critical political economy perspective, the statement is laughable, of course. Doesn’t he know that markets are created through violence and political intervention? Doesn’t he know that Adam Smith himself saw the dire human consequences of the division of labour brought to the extreme?

Those objections are, however, beside the point. Milei is not a critical political economist. Instead, he is the leader of a peripheral country. His discourse does not need to be theoretically sophisticated or historically accurate. All he needs to do is to politically mobilise his electorate and promise better days.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 2023, President Lula complained that “we have not corrected the excesses of market deregulation and the support for the minimum state”.

Back in 2010 I was fortunate enough to be invited by Ian Bruff to present several papers at the Standing Group on International Relations (SGIR) 7^th Pan-European International Relations Conference in Stockholm (7-9 September 2010). Amongst my presentations was my participation in a roundtable discussion on Antonio Gramsci along with various people, including Mark Rupert and Owen Worth. My intervention was entitled ‘Gramsci’s Method’ and it attempted to outline an approach to reading Gramsci by bouncing off some ideas drawn from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). I had been reading that book over the summer and it reminded me of various insights in the Prison Notebooks on issues of method and epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. As a snappy intervention that raised some specific questions about method and hermeneutic understanding in approaching the reading of texts, I thought it might be worthwhile to relay the content of that roundtable presentation here.

Political economy is most influential when it links academic analysis with practical participation in processes of social change. Concurrently, the enthusiasm and growing expertise of a younger generation of political economists is crucial. Both features are evident in the latest issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy. Its contents range from the analysis of the federal budget to the political economy of Antonio Negri; and from the Albanese government’s new industry policies to the ongoing controversy over building seawalls to protect coastal real estate. The authors range from political economy newcomers to veterans; while the implicit sub-text is about relevance and regeneration.

The quest for relevance pervades Australian political economists’ long-standing concern to connect with the interests of the labour movement and activists in progressive social and environmental organisations. Concurrently, regeneration requires encouragement of younger political economists to push towards the frontiers of knowledge. The JAPE editors’ decision to introduce an annual Young Scholars Award reflected the latter ambition; and the most obvious indicator of its effectiveness is the quality of articles by Award winners in this journal during the last decade. Articles by more of the applicants and awardees are a particularly strong feature of the latest issue, alongside contributions by more established political economists.

“A tax system is a political philosophy expressed in numbers.” Stefan Collini, writing in the London Review of Books (19 October 2023) went on say:

“(a)lthough introduction of a tax can seem to be just a matter of brute politics, public acceptance of a new imposition is affected by the extent to which a justification can be provided. Elements of economic theory usually figure in the argument, but there are also widely held, albeit conflicting, moral intuitions in which ideas of fairness and desert play some role.”

In fact, the clash of opposing moral arguments clustering around the promotion of particular concepts of fairness and desert form the primary grounds on which the politics of taxation play out in liberal democracies like the United States, United Kingdom and the ex-Dominions of the British Empire. Supporters of both the right and left, as well as those clustered around the centre, all claim to promote policies that treat citizens fairly, while rewarding desert or merit. It’s just that they place a different gloss on the morally slippery concepts of desert and fairness, and a different priority ordering.

I recall vividly the day the horrific Christchurch mosque shootings occurred. At the time I had a makeshift rock-climbing wall in my garage, and as I sat flicking through news stories on my phone between climbs I came across accounts of the still-developing tragedy. In the days that followed, we learned more about the killer through his tedious but revealing manifesto. Parts of this were straight out of the extreme right-wing playbook – the belief in a taken-for-granted European culture threatened with extinction by non-white migration, or “replacement”; the need for violence to protect the future of white children; and the ethnopluralist stress on the link between land and race. Within this roll-call of right-wing tropes, however, there was embedded a stranger idea that stood out to me – “ecofascism”, an ideology the murderer explicitly identified with. For several years, I grappled with what ecofascism actually was: what is its logic, its particular ideological potency that has spurred more than one right-wing terrorist (the 2019 El Paso massacre was also framed in ecofascist language)? The key that unlocked it all for me came from a seemingly unlikely source – recently-departed Australian author David Ireland’s last novel, The World Repair Video Game.

On 9 May 2024, a week before the much anticipated Federal Budget, Minister for Resources Madeleine King unveiled the Australian Government’s Future Gas Strategy. This 110 page report sees gas as central to Australia’s domestic energy use and export portfolio “to 2050 and beyond”. As she announced it, Ms King also declared that gas will be central to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 as it will not only be economically necessary but would help to “firm renewables”. As we heard Ms King’s announcement, and read the report, we felt a sense of déjà vu. What is proposed sounds remarkably like the former Coalition Government’s “Gas Lead Recovery” announced in 2020 by then Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss Australia’s uncompetitive airline industry, the cost of privatising essential public services, and the latest inflation figures.

Greg Jericho is Chief Economist at the Australia Institute and the Centre for Future Work and popular columnist of Grogonomics with Guardian Australia. Each week on Dollars & Sense, Greg dives into the latest economic figures to explain what they can tell us about what’s happening in the economy, how it will impact you and where things are headed.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @GrogsGamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @ElinorJ_L

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.

Superannuation tax concessions are meant to encourage saving for retirement, but the system is being gamed to help the wealthiest avoid paying tax. Australia Institute Chief Economist Greg Jericho joins Ebony Bennett on this episode of Follow the Money to bust some super myths and discuss what a fairer system should look like.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 30 July 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

Guest: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @GrogsGamut

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebony_bennett

Show notes:

‘Who benefits? The high cost of super tax concessions’ by Minh Ngoc Le (June 2024)

‘Superannuation tax concessions are making inequality worse’ by Greg Jericho (July 2024)

Theme music: Pulse and Thrum; additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

You can see Professor Joseph E Stiglitz speak live in several cities across Australia as part of the Australia Institute’s 30th anniversary celebrations. Tickets are available via our website.

As a parent, I’m always careful to remind them that super powers are fun for pretending, but they are not real.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to teach this to kids when federal government ministers say things like “green hydrogen is at the heart of our vision for Australia as a…renewable energy superpower.”

SOCK! POW! KAZAAM!

As much as kids and ministers might like to play green hydrogen superpowers they should not be used when crossing the road or formulating tax and energy policy.

Which brings us to the federal government’s Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive, which was open for consultation until last Friday.

This program will see the Government subsidise eligible hydrogen production by $2 per kilogram. Budget documents (p68) give an estimated cost of “$6.7 billion over ten years from 2024–25 (and an average of $1.1 billion per year from 2034–35 to 2040–41).”

The FMAA aims to support investment in Australian value-added manufacturing initiatives relating to the renewable energy transition. While it remains to be legislated, the budget suggests the FMAA will entail approximately $23 billion of new public spending over ten years. The majority of this is accounted for by two new tax credits which incentivise private investment into domestic critical minerals processing and renewable hydrogen production. These credits are available from 2027 and, while currently uncapped, are estimated to entail $13.7 billion in public industrial support by 2035-35. Also notable is approximately $4.5 billion in new funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) across several new initiatives, providing grants, subsidies, and investment for the manufacturing and development of renewable technologies, including batteries and solar panels.

The average pay for the principal of an elite private school in Sydney is about $687,000 a year. At least four get a salary and benefits package worth over $900,000, and one of those is on over $1 million a year.

It took the leak of confidential data to find this out because, despite being heavily subsidised, private schools in most parts of Australia don’t have to tell anyone what they pay their headmasters. The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission’s reporting requirements come close, but they don’t require schools to say how much they pay individual staff in particular positions.

Even if $600,000 is only a rough estimate, it’s a lot more than the principals of NSW’s public schools get. Their salaries – which are published by the NSW Government – range between $140,000 and $216,000 a year. Seek puts the average pay for a school principal in Australia at between $165,000 and $185,000 a year.

This pay gap is symptomatic of the widening inequality between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ of our education system.

The Victorian Electoral Matters Committee recommendations include:

• Truth in political advertising laws.
• Changes to how the Victorian upper house is elected.
  • The Committee acknowledges that “If group voting tickets were eliminated but the current structure of regions continued, major parties would likely be over-represented in the Upper House and there would likely be fewer minor parties and less diversity”.
• Prohibiting groups other than the Electoral Commission from distributing certain postal voter applications.
• Improving access to polling places for voters with disabilities.
• Parties to establish codes of conduct for their members in relation to their behaviour on social media.
• Further restricting which party names, abbreviations and logos can be registered, as is the case at the Commonwealth level.

“The Victorian Electoral Matters Committee has conducted a thorough and detailed investigation that gives the Victorian public a lot to consider,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.

“With the multi-party Committee repeating its recommendation for truth in political advertising, there is no excuse for further delays from the Victorian Government.”

Truth in political advertising

“In Victoria, it is perfectly legal to lie in a political ad, and it shouldn’t be,” said Bill Browne.

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Parking Reform Network. It is shared here with permission. All pictures were supplied by the writer.

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Public Square, a CNU journal. It is shared here with permission. All pictures were supplied by the writer.

Historian Dr Prudence Flowers joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the politics of reproductive rights in American politics, Project 2025 and the wave of support for Kamala Harris since Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 12 and Thursday 25 July 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Call 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, chat online or video call via their website.

Guest: Prudence Flowers, Senior Lecturer in US History, Flinders University // @FlowersPGF

Host: Emma Shortis, Senior Research for International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

‘‘Kamala IS brat’: how the power of pop music has influenced 60 years of US elections’ by Prudence Flowers, The Conversation (July 2024)

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg Jericho discusses the economic impact of a second Trump presidency for Australia and the region – and why four more years of Trump could be a disaster for the climate.

Greg Jericho is Chief Economist at the Australia Institute and the Centre for Future Work and popular columnist of Grogonomics with Guardian Australia. Each week on Dollars & Sense, Greg dives into the latest economic figures to explain what they can tell us about what’s happening in the economy, how it will impact you and where things are headed.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @GrogsGamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @ElinorJ_L

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to podcasts@australiainstitute.org.au.

1. Fossil fuel exports.
   Minister Bowen did not address, and no one asked about, the fact that Australia is the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter. With over 100 new fossil fuel projects in the development pipeline, as well as four new coal mines and at least 116 new gas wells approved since 2022, the Australian Government shows no intention of changing this status. Just this week, the government opened areas of Commonwealth waters off the coasts of South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania for offshore gas exploration.
2. Emissions outside of electricity.