Fresh Economic Thinking

There has been a lot of news on both the housing policy and COVID policy fronts recently. Cameron and Jonathan share their thoughts on things like the Housing Future Fund, the latest on Australia’s COVID vaccination injury compensation scheme, a new anti-discrimination bill about COVID vaccines, and news out of the United States about hidden influences behind the COVID mandates, and more. The Lee...

Why does an economist start a website documenting the effect of city upzoning? Matthew Maltman is an Australian economist who runs the website onefinaleffort.com . In this interview, Cameron talks with Matthew Maltman about the case for experimenting with zoning changes to understand what really happens. Did Auckland fix its housing problems with upzoning? Where are other planning rule changes bei...

Misha Saul is an investment manager by day, but by night he is also one of the more interesting participants in Australia’s economic, cultural and political debates. He has broad interests in history, culture, war, finance and business, and always gets you thinking. For example, Misha wrote an essay entitled A “New Hong Kong” in Australia? where he mused about building new cities and how we might...

What exactly is Super? What’s its purpose? How can we do retirement policy better? This is Part 2 of a special joint episode where Cameron is hosted by Matt from Aussie Firebug to participate in a debate about superannuation with CIO of The Motley Fool Australia, Scott Phillips. Find Part 1 of this episode here . Check out Aussie Firebug here . Follow Cameron and Jonathan on Twitter. Theme music:...

What exactly is Super? What’s its purpose? This is Part 1 of a special joint episode where Cameron is hosted by Matt from Aussie Firebug to participate in a debate about superannuation with CIO of The Motley Fool Australia, Scott Phillips. * What is the purpose of Super? * Is there an alternative to the current Super system? * Thoughts on how we could fix the Super system * Do we actually need to...

The Economist magazine recently wrote about the “ worrying amount of fraud in medical research ” and the former editor of The BMJ medical journal, Richard Smith, asked if it is “ Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise? ” Too many designated experts in our society are anything but. They get things wrong, and when they do, they impose enormous costs on others. Is a...

Our first FET podcast guest is Catherine Cashmore, an experienced property professional. Catherine’s insights are unique because not only does she have on-the-ground insights about property investing, she has a deep understanding of the theoretical and policy debates about housing and property that have happened since the days of Henry George in the late 19th century. As well as dealing with this...

Is economic growth possible in a finite world? It’s a big question. In this episode, we discuss whether economic growth must come with more resource use, whether that is good or bad, whether degrowth is possible, and practical ways that societies get good environmental outcomes. Also, learn how Cameron has changed his views on this after a decade of research and why he now has an optimistic view a...

“Prediction. In ten years it will be hard to find anyone who will admit to supporting COVID lockdowns, school closures, masks, and vaccine passports.” That was Cameron’s viral tweet this week. It gets to the heart of the great unwinding of COVID panic, an opinion shift that is becoming more evident by the day. A similar unwinding is happening in the crypto world with the collapse of the FTX exchan...

It has been a tumultuous 2022. Residual COVID panic persists in the news, but the real health issues this year are not COVID. Deaths from all causes are up 17% in Australia in 2022 and are similarly elevated in many countries. We look at Australia’s COVID vaccine compensation scheme and dig into the puzzle of why the media seems to be ignoring 2,600 injured people who have made compensation claims...

We first chat about recent observations from our travels of what you notice about “rich” countries (whatever you interpret that to mean). Then, we tackle one of my pet topic of Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs)—that is the combined effect of both taxes and losing welfare from earning an additional dollar (due to “means testing”). David Sligar’s recent article on the topic caught our eye. I help...

We also take a deeper look at the issues with a new Credit Suisse report that is getting headlines claiming that Australians are the richest people in the world because of our expensive houses. One of the big issues with such reports is the way certain assets are counted by others are not. In the barney of the week, we look at how New South Wales has refused to cooperate with Queensland’s new land...

We change the pace a little this week and discuss Jonathan’s political dilemma — he has no one to vote for who represents his range of views. Perhaps the way around this is via more direct democracy, whereby you vote directly for each policy rather than voting for a political representative. Or maybe we skip the voting altogether and randomly draw our politicians from the general public, just like...

In our barney of the week, we talk about queuing for rentals in Ireland. A viral photo triggered widespread blame on local tenancy law changes. But hot rental markets are a common trend globally in 2022 as all markets readjust from the COVID years. We talk about Mr 283, the whinging landlord with 283 properties who thought it wise to call talkback radio to complain about a proposed rent freeze. Wh...

Hot off the presses, Rigged is the second edition of Game of Mates. To mark the book’s release on 2 August 2022, we chat about the new bits which includes hypochondriac level largesse to the pharmaceutical industry. And in our barney of the week, an economist writes a paper for Uber and gets payed $100,000. Economists say there is no wayyy he did it for the money. Rigged: How networks of powerful...

What Singapore has that Australia does not is high and growing home ownership and… a public housing developer. Cameron argues instead of fiddling around with arcane schemes like we are now, we should just have the government build homes like they do in Singapore. Cameron’s proposal is called HouseMate. He also confronts myths about rent control in the barney of the week. https://fresheconomicthink...

Wouldn’t it be nice if the government didn’t give away our resources for nothing to their big business friends? Cameron weighs in on the gas supply crisis as an example of a ‘game of mates’. We talk more broadly about corruption in poor countries compared to rich countries. In the Barney of the Week, Cameron says ‘meh’ to the excitement over getting rid of stamp duty. Canberra Times article by Ebo...

Cameron challenges some of the core beliefs of crypto enthusiasts and economic libertarian types who are into Bitcoin and gold as solutions to inflation. And... should we be terrified of central bank digital currencies that will control what we can buy?  fresheconomicthinking.substack.com https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray https://twitter.com/JonoLooseCannon Theme music: Happy Swing by Serge Quad...

In the barney of the week, Cameron gets  Twitter blocked by progressive economist John Quiggin over covid disagreements. Then the topic of the week is why waste - plastic bags or food - isn't such a bad thing. fresheconomicthinking.substack.com https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray https://twitter.com/JonoLooseCannon Theme music: Happy Swing by Serge Quadrado Music under Creative Commons Licence CC...

In this first episode, Cameron talks about a stoush he's having with right-wingers who think regulation is behind high property prices. Then he explains why superannuation is a scam and why the left's support of it is so dumb. fresheconomicthinking.substack.com https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray https://twitter.com/JonoLooseCannon   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with oth...

As we emerge from the election, it's time for a significant announcement on a change in direction for the podcast. Some of you will remember our first episode last year was with Dr Cameron Murray. @DrCameronMurray is an economist who challenges lots of conventional wisdoms, the co-author of Game of Mates, now publishing alot on his own growing substack Fresh Economic Thinking and getting increasin...

In surely the most under-reported story of the last month, people starve as the madness of ‘zero covid’ reaches its logical conclusion in China. Human Rights Watch Senior China Researcher Yaqiu Wang joins us to discuss the nightmare. Twitter: @Yaqiu Email us:  loosecannonpod@gmail.com Twitter: @JonoLooseCannon Parnell on Twitter: @parnellpalme Theme: Mountains All Around Us by Scott Holmes Music u...

Alex Trauth-Goik clears up the myths and explains the realities of China's social credit system. Alex speaks Mandarin and has unique insights on why the Chinese public is generally positive about the use of high-tech surveillance. Is it Black Mirror, Orwell, or just efficient government? Alex on Twitter: @Alex_Goik Alex's articles on Medium Alex on Learning Mandarin https://theconversation.com/chi...

New Zealand's protests and High Court ruling overturning some vaccine mandates. We get an update from Ani O'Brien, Digital Editor of independent media site The Platform NZ Ani is civil liberties-focused and also a self-described lesbian radical feminist. Ani on Twitter @aniobrien The Platform @theplatform_nz https://aniobrien.medium.com/ Email us:  loosecannonpod@gmail.com New Twitter: @JonoLooseC...

Special podcast on the Canadian Government's invoking of emergency powers in response to  the truckers protest. Jonathan Kay , editor of Quillette and host of the Quillette podcast joins us from Toronto to explain what is going on. https://quillette.com/2022/02/15/canadas-freedom-convoy-protesters-in-their-own-words/ Jonathan Kay on Twitter: @jonkay and @Quillette Email us:  loosecannonpod@gmail.c...