Guest post: A pretty big global economic storm
Originally a comment by Bruce Everett on A pause, a freeze, a ban, a cancellation.
This is going to be a pretty big global economic storm that Trump’s brewing. I’m kind of glad to be in Australia right now, where we certainly have economic problems, just not as fundamentally bad as a lot of other economies. We may be well positioned to mitigate a lot of the chaos.
That being said, we’ve got an opposition that’s great at talking up its economic cred, but hasn’t done a competent job since 2007, despite being in government for most of it, and they weren’t even that s**t hot when they were okay (The Howard Gov’t 1996-2007 coasted on Keating’s economic reforms and a long-lasting mining boom). Since 2007, the Labor party has been better at micro-tweaking the economy through catastrophe (see the Rudd gov’t during the GFC), and there’s every sign that they’re competent to do as best as possible through this current mess, barring perhaps some issues with the reserve bank and how it operates.
On cultural issues, Labor is actually doing alright here when dealing with Nazis and various anti-Semites, despite what the opposition (repeatedly) says. It’s not adopting the worst of the left, and it’s not losing its spine in response to demands from the right.
However, Labor isn’t doing at all well when it comes to the erosion of women’s rights by gender woo, and yet, the opposition is leaving this alone. It’s conspicuous that the conservatives aren’t focusing on this, but then perhaps they aren’t prepared to touch the issue after the way the party messed up in the way it treated Moira Deeming.
I’ve heard a number of local GCs express the view that a Liberal Party (our conservatives) will solve the issue, but I really, really doubt it. It seems like rank tribalism, or opportunism. Both of the major parties are serving up s**t sandwiches on this issue, sans bread.
And gawd. The lynch pin of the conservatives’ economic plan; building nuclear plants magically faster than more experienced, trained and infrastructure-rich nations ever did, in a country with a grid that’s ill-suited to using nuclear. I’m not anti-nuclear (where else are we going to get a constant supply of Molybdenum-99?), and if we had industries that required a constant, high level output (such as high volume silicon lithography), then we’d absolutely need to at least consider nuclear. But Australia doesn’t.
Australia has a grid that flip-flops all over the place when it come to demand, while the price to run nuclear reactors doesn’t scale well with output – they’re not cost-effective at lower outputs. And that’s before considering difficulties in ramping output up and down fast enough to respond to demand. (And before considering questions of proliferation, how that effects regional geopolitics, and where we’re going to store the waste).
Hugely expensive tech, a phenomenally unrealistic timeline for implementation, costings as substantial as crepe paper on a rainy day, and a completely poor fit for existing demands and infrastructure; that’s the conservative economic plan here. And they’re definitely in striking distance of wining the election this year.
Conservatives the world over are selling a lot of economic cockamamie. A lot more than I remember them selling in my youth. Yet for some reason they’re retaining an illusion of economic credibility like an echo from decades past.
The specter of “efficient” conservative administration similarly haunts bodies politic the world over. Both the Tories in the UK, and the GOP in the US handle their bureaucracies in a manner that would be best narrated with a string of Hanna Barbera sound effects, and yet adherents will still believe. Just one slip from a centrist government seems enough to get people into a fit of buyer’s remorse over the supposedly “progressive” regime they supported, and then you’re back with delusional clowns with fetishes for white elephants and firing people.
My apologies for the rant. Maybe it wouldn’t have built up so much if I commented here more often.
Canada isn’t so lucky, particularly since Trump has targeted us specifically. It would be easy for him to destroy our economy. but he’ll seriously damage his own in the process. He won’t care, so long as he imagines he’s “won”.
And the Republicans still claim to be the party of “law and order”.
Well Law and Order has mostly only ever been a phrase meaning “hang someone” so in that sense they haven’t changed a lick.
And law and order has mostly meant other people – not them. They are free to break the law with impunity, but those others over there? No way!
The law of the old west…at least as they imagine it. John Wayne rules.
Good morning from Waikerie, Bruce.
Pretty close to a spot on analysis, I would just add that IMHO Bill Shorten was the PM we needed, but Murdoch cut him off at the ankles. Bill should have remained Labor leader, would have won in a canter, and been a far, far better PM, possibly the best since Whitlam.
I don’t know where you live, but one of Dutton’s brain fart nukes is to be at Port Augusta, built on the site of the demolished coal generator and hooking into the grid infrastructure. Anyone who knows the region will know that the old Port Augusta grid is chokkas with solar and wind power.
Just down the road from the old power station is salt bush land that carried one sheep per hectare on a good day, now utilising solar power and desalination, growing huge crops of tomatoes.
https://www.sundropfarms.com/
Please do, it seems to me you could become a very valuable contributor in short order.
As an aside, I love living in a rural town, but boy, am I surrounded by the type of people you mention above. Our local federal MP has his seat as long as he wants it, and as he is from the hard right faction, 62% first preferences last time around.
Bruce, hi from across the ditch. Good comment. I think the reason your conservative parties haven’t weighed in on the GC/trans issue isn’t because of any shame from the Demming disaster, but rather because compared to the GOP they are still faced with the reality of election s in a liberal social democracy. Much the same with NZ. I suspect most of them agree with the GC view, but they are not prepared to face any potential electoral damage on an issue they don’t really give a damn about. I mean, either way they win, so they’re happy to let women fight that battle without support.
Please keep on ranting! I particularly liked the sentence “The specter of “efficient” conservative administration similarly haunts bodies politic the world over”, with Its echo of Marx. Despite failure after failure. it seems impossible to exorcise this spectre from conservative minds and the body politic; even parties that are social-democratic feel they have to pay lip-service, and all too often a great deal more than lip-service, to this spectre.
Fark sake, another one. And he’s even called Bruce!
For me, I can’t get over the damn AUKUS disaster. On no notice whatsoever, our government basically decided to throw the largest military budget expansion ever… at USA, to underwrite their own military development by buying up phenomenally expensive nuclear subs, which we can’t build and can’t maintain in any of our own ports – these deficiencies will make us reliant on US ports and shipyards for upkeep and hence will place us at the mercy of US military decisions – they will arrive on a pathetically slow schedule, will be obsolete well before we get the full complement, and will be phenomenally expensive to decommission when they reach EOL.
Oh and it came at the expense of scrapping an actually reasonable tender for naval expansion with diesel electric subs – designs that we can bring to our own shipyards and maintain ourselves, with a sane construction and delivery schedule. My god, if only I could wave a magic wand and fix things.
@ David
Hi David. I’m just down the road from you at Gawler.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time re-evaluating Bill Shorten. Some of the realpolitik he’s been involved in in the past left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, as did some of the media overkill surrounding the Beaconsfield mine collapse. But with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve probably been unfair to him. Petulant, even. Compared to Rudd, Gillard and Albanese, Shorten’s positively low-bullshit, while his compassion is understated, possibly to a fault.
Albanese reminds me of an episode of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, where Mike Mouse (aka Mighty Mouse) was cast in a biopic about Mighty Mouse. Mike Mouse couldn’t even get his lines right, despite them being his catch phrases. Albanese has for some time come across as a guy cast as Albanese, but unable to play him convincingly. A poor mockery of himself. Confected blokey-bloke references to a upbringing in trust housing, affected strine and the like, all of it unnecessary. He has a real working class past – he doesn’t need to act (never mind what his minders say).
Back when I was a member of the Humanist Society of South Australia, we used to get visits from a bloke who was part of a campaign to get solar thermal installed at the old power plant site at Port Augusta. I’m a bit peeved it didn’t take off, but then, we had a bunch of coal fetishists in parliament at the time.
You may have a bit of a trog representing you up at Waikerie, but at least you have a rhyming bakery. That’s got to count for something.
@Rob
I may have spoken too soon. The QLD government has just popped a moratorium on “hormonal” therapies for new patients under 18. They may botch this of course – it’s not entirely clear how many conditions are potentially effected by the move at this point.
I think there’s a bit of overlap between not wanting to lose the liberal-minded conservatives, and the not-another-Moira-Deeming-kerfuffle. Another poo-storm could involve factional to-and-fro, with retaliations and over-compensations, potentially alienating people from a variety of blocs. Moderate conservatives may not like Deeming one bit, but they may not like the results of a fight with her or her like either. It’s all risk, little reward as you suggest.
I guess QLD is a wait and see.
@Tim
Oddly enough, I’m not a Marxist. I’m certainly left of center, but I’m a bit Karl Popper when it comes to Marx (or Freud for that matter). I’ll have to reconsider my rhetoric now. :P
I agree that social democratic parties have paid lip service. There’s a whole self-gaslighting, low-confidence avoidance of the issue. “If we talk up our economic cred, people will think we’re kooks! Talk about something else! They vote for us in spite of our economic management, despite the fact that we’re actually quite competent!”
@Holms. The double degree I transferred to decades ago had two program directors listed; a Bruce, and another Bruce. Eric Idle was later given an honorary degree by the same institution. Hope that amuses.
And AUKUS; that was a turd sandwich of a deal. But it rated well with people who like being lied to if it fits into a he-manly narrative.
Nor am I – far from it (though I do admire his and Engels’ description and analyses of the plight of the working classes). I am very much in the camp of Popper, Lord Acton, and Kolakowsi where Marxism is concerned. And I was certainly not suggesting in any way that you were Marxist. But I was struck by the resemblance between your ‘The specter of “efficient” conservative administration similarly haunts bodies politic the world over’ & the opening of The Communist Manifesto – ‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre…’