Support for ETS slips below 50%

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

The latest climate change Morgan Poll finds that support for the government’s ETS has fallen below 50% for the first time, and is now at 46%, compared to 50% last November and 55% last August.

This seems to be due to low support (34%) among voters aged 50 or more, as all the other age groups are still at 50% or more.

Though there is no detail on Morgan’s website, a story about the poll in Crikey suggests that the shift is due to the growing partisanship of this issue that I blogged about last month. They don’t give a number for Coalition supporters, but if as Crikey says Labor and Green voters have become more likely to support the ETS, the overall decline must be due to weaker support from Coalition voters.

One curious thing: On the question about whether concerns about global warming are exaggerated the comparisons are all with November poll, omitting any mention of a December poll that asked the same question.

Update: Pollytics has the full results.

How should we deal with union political power?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

Earlier in the week, an Age report suggested that negotiations between the parties on political donations and funding laws had broken down over the issue of union affiliation fees to the ALP. The Liberal spokesman on this issue, Senator Michael Ronaldson, was reported as saying:

”It is increasingly clear that the level of union influence means that the reforms are all but dead in the water. And this is a great tragedy for this country.”

But in an Age op-ed Joo-Cheong Tham argues that union affiliation fees to political parties should be exempted from controls on political funding.

A distinction can be made, as he does, between individual or group membership of a political party – implying some general commitment to it – and ad hoc donations. But if the concern is avoiding the threats to ‘integrity’ when ‘holders of public office give undue weight to the interests of their financiers’ (Joo-Cheong’s words), it is not clear that this distinction is a difference that counts in favour of exempting union payments. Continue reading “How should we deal with union political power?” →

Goddess of the Market

~ Andrew Norton ~ 60 Comments

It’s rare for PhD theses to be turned into good books, but I am glad to report that with Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right Jennifer Burns has beaten the odds. Her book is readable and interesting throughout.

200px-Ayn_Rand1

There was one paradox of Rand’s work and legacy that particularly caught my eye after last year’s discussion of liberalism and the emotions. Rand thought that the emotions should always come from rationality; even sex was to be inspired by a recognition of shared values rather than physical attraction (a convenient idea for a woman in love with a much younger man). It sounds like an extreme version of the liberal emphasis on reason and rules over prejudices and passions. Continue reading “Goddess of the Market” →

Education and living alone

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

The Age this morning reports on research by David de Vaus and Sue Richardson on living alone. Though the economic incentives are to share – especially as governments bias more policies against singles – living alone is becoming more common. The proportion of people living alone increased from 11.9% in 1996 to 13% in 2006.

As de Vaus and Richardson note, educational disparities between men and women are part of the explanation. The tables in the paper make it a little hard to see what’s going on, as they report different groups as a % of the living alone. It is clearer when we look at the numbers of people in the different groups. Continue reading “Education and living alone” →

Stand-up economics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 3 Comments

Yoram Bauman is an economics stand-up comedian:

My dad said, ‘Yoram, you’ll never make it as a stand-up economist. There’s no demand.’

“I said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad; I’m a supply-side economist. I just stand up and let the jokes trickle down.'”

“Auwgkh!” the audience moans.

“I believe in the Laffer curve.”

Bada-bing?

Auwgkh indeed.

Recessions not good for happiness (but not that bad either)

~ Andrew Norton ~ 8 Comments

Anti-prosperity thinkers have long pointed to flat levels of happiness as proof that more income doesn’t make us happier. The more adventurous, such as Clive Hamilton, use this as part of their argument for cutting economic growth. Last year I reported Barry Schwartz’s argument that the US recession may have a positive effect on happiness as people realise that they don’t need the latest in consumer goods.

I take the view that while voluntary downshifting can be good for happiness, recessions are bad for subjective well-being (though because believing that your standard of living is going to improve in future is generally good for happiness, happiness is likely to recover more quickly than the economy).

Some US evidence on the happiness effects of their recession is starting to be published. Since 1972 the General Social Survey has asked its respondents ‘taken all together, how would you say things are these days would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?. In 2008 13.9% of Americans said they were ‘not too happy’, the second highest number ever recorded (the worst was 17.2% in 1972). ‘Very happy’ was on 31.7%, the worst result since 1994 and equal fourth worst. Continue reading “Recessions not good for happiness (but not that bad either)” →

Higher education policy 1979

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

As reported in the SMH, the National Archives today released two 1979 Cabinet papers on higher education.

One Cabinet submission was a proposal to re-introduce university fees, perhaps at about $1,000 a year. The arguments in favour were ‘equity’, noting the generally regressive nature of higher education subsidy; some microeconomic benefit in encouraging students to think more carefully about whether they should pursue higher education, and if so in which discipline; and budgetary savings.

The arguments against were essentially political – a 1977 election promise not to reintroduce fees, public criticism, and complications in Commonwealth-State relations (at the time, universities were funded via tied grants to the states, rather than directly). These arguments won.

This result seems to capture the long-term culture of higher education policy on the Coalition side – some broadly sound but half-hearted and quarter-way policy suggestions, trumped by political nervousness. There has never been a critical mass of Coalition MPs who care enough and know enough about the issue to take some political risks to achieve something really worthwhile. Continue reading “Higher education policy 1979” →

When can religion influence politics? (or why a Christmas public holiday is OK)

~ Andrew Norton ~ 39 Comments

We have finished the year with worries about the border between religion and politics – the Fairfax feature, Charles Richardson’s warning that Rodney Smith is too sanguine about the influence of ‘fundamentalists’, and Ross Fitzgerald’s why-oh-why piece on the fate of ‘secular democracy’. Implicit in these critiques seems to be a quasi-constitutional belief that religion has no place in the public sphere.

Ross Fitzgerald, for example, seems to be particuarly upset about the millions spent on World Catholic Youth Day. But why is this different from the numerous sporting and other major events that get state sponsorship? As Chris Berg argued during the week, the benefits of these events are typically fictitious. But given politicians like sponsoring international events, are the Catholics illegitimate in a way the petrol-heads who descend on Melbourne for car racing are not?

Fitzgerald and Charles are both concerned about religious influence on Stephen Conroy’s internet filtering plans. But given that there are also mundane secular reasons for this policy – such as Conroy says enforcing the existing censorship rules – does the fact that the Australian Christian Lobby is backing Conroy make the policy worse (especially as ACL is appealing not to religious values, but to the not-terribly-controversial view that children should not see pornography). Continue reading “When can religion influence politics? (or why a Christmas public holiday is OK)” →

The distributional politics of climate change policy

~ Andrew Norton ~ 33 Comments

One advantage of the Coalition breaking the parliamentary consensus on an ETS is that more attention is being paid to the actual content and effects of Labor’s scheme. In responding to the Coalition’s ‘new tax’ argument the government has released (to the media, I cannot find any detail online) details of how ‘millions’ of people will be better off under the ETS.

This confirms the Opposition’s point and tries to shift the politics to an old-fashioned redistributional battle. The reason millions of people will be better off is that most lower-income earners will be ‘over-compensated’ for the ETS’s price effects. This is because actual lower-income household carbon emissions will vary considerably, depending on location, housing design, and lifestyle. To ensure that households with carbon emissions at the high end of the normal range are fully compensated, households with low to average carbon emissions will receive additional payments that cover their costs and add more, which can be used to improve their overall standard of living (including consuming more energy!).

This redistribution – along with the handouts to polluters – will be financed by, as Tony Abbott says, a new tax on people with above-average earnings. Take for example a single person earning $80,000 a year. According to the government’s calculations they will be an average $677 a year worse off under an ETS, equivalent to about a 4% increase in income tax. Continue reading “The distributional politics of climate change policy” →

The public’s view of religion and politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

Today the Fairfax broadsheets turn from the religious beliefs of Australians to how they see the relationship between religion and politics.

Their Nielsen poll had however been scooped by Pollytics blog, which reported during the week that most Australians think that religion and politics should be separate

religandpolit1

Even among religious believers, 80% agree with the proposition that religion and politics should be separate. But religion appeared more popular when the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes asked about whether politicians should follow Christian values in making decisions. Even among those with no religion, 10% thought politicians should follow Christian values, along with nearly 40% of people with a religion. Continue reading “The public’s view of religion and politics” →