Tag Archive for 'open letter'

Fiscal stimulus: Eight economists and a few politicians

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Environment, Industrial Relations, Markets, Middle East, Policy and Sociology
. 11 Comments

Picking up on Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens’ remarks about “borrowing to invest” and not being afraid of a deficit if there are good policy outcomes to be had, eight prominent economists (including a couple of blogging ones) have written an open letter to Kevin Rudd making suggestions for a further fiscal stimulus under three headings of policy – Superannuation flexibility, Building the nation and Preparing for climate change. The text is here at Troppo (one of the authors is Nicholas Gruen).

There’s been a bit of press coverage this morning, and no doubt it’s a worthy thing to stimulate debate by proposing substantive policy measures rather than just advancing critique. It may be an even worthier thing to shift the terms of the debate, regardless of the merits of the proposed policy directions. We don’t see enough of this sort of initiative.

But I do wonder if the economists stop and think about the political feasibibility of their proposals.

Continue reading ‘Fiscal stimulus: Eight economists and a few politicians’

Open Garnaut Review report thread

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, International and Markets
. 63 Comments

It’s out today. LP bloggers will have more during the day as it’s digested, but here’s an open thread for instant analysis and commentary. Please also feel free to link in comments to other posts or articles.

By way of preview, a number of climate scientists have released an open letter to Kevin Rudd (text here):

The Garnaut Review concluded that an emission reduction target for Australia of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 would be an equitable contribution to the international effort required to achieving this outcome. As a group of Australia’s leading climate change scientists, we urge you to adopt this target as the minimum requirement for Australia’s contribution to an effective global climate agreement.

In Crikey yesterday, Bernard Keane contrasted the apocalyptic prophesies of doom emanating from business with the rather lame reality of the government’s proposals to date.

Nightmare stuff. Imagine how bad it would be the Government had actually proposed a serious effort to reduce our carbon emissions?

As Keane notes in another article, the release of the Treasury modelling today:

should provide a welcome corrective to much of the hysteria generated by modelling commissioned by rentseeking industry groups.

Keane also observes that Garnaut will be talking about adaptation strategies and costs in this report as well.

Note: Related post from dk.au on public opinion, polls and climate change.

Update: The report has now been released and can be downloaded from here.

Update: From Crikey, Bernard Keane on Garnaut at a glance and Clive Hamilton on politics trumping science.

Elsewhere [dk.au]: Barry Brooks is also running an open thread at his blog Climate Dilemma [ht: Peter Wood in comments]

Joshua Gans comments on Chapter 14 (TEEIIs) which he argues is “dramatically superior” to the Green Paper solution of free permits. He also renews his call for border adjustment taxes:

In my opinion, it would be better to bite the bullet and, at least for imports, assess the carbon cost of those imports and tax them. This will get the price signals right and also put pressure on trading partners to put in their own emissions trading schemes so as to avoid that tax.