Australian poverty increasing since the pandemic.
www.austaxpolicy.com/one-in-seven... @pagdavidson.bsky.social
11.03.2026 00:26
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Australian poverty increasing since the pandemic.
www.austaxpolicy.com/one-in-seven... @pagdavidson.bsky.social
"The Chinese model, if generalized, poses the genuine threat of locking all of humanity into a perpetual dictatorship...
The US has problems that are in many ways the opposite. The society harbours extraordinary centrifugal forces"
open.substack.com/pub/josephhe...
"The dystopias we ought fear will be less like 1984 with its all seeing Big Brother, and more like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, in which a bug caught in a teleprinter results in the wrong person being targeted and tormented." www.programmablemutter.com/p/ai-is-a-bu...
Moon exiting eclipse. Red with white on one edge
Coming out...
On "cognitive surrender" to AI text. "confident outputs are treated as epistemically authoritative, lowering the threshold for scrutiny" (Shaw and Nave)
Screenshot with "25% chance of at least 0mm of rain"
And 75% chance of ??. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology continues its war on probability.
My colleagues at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Social Policy unit, are seeking a postdoc for 2-3 years. Great opportunity! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
Abstract submissions close tomorrow!
Increase in wealth within each age group. Among those under 35, the wealth of the top 10% has increased by 126% since 2003, vs 39% for the lowest 60%. (For other age groups, greater increases at the top - but the difference is smaller)
Yes. From our Inequality report: povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/wp-content/u...
More nonsense from the HIA on capital gains taxes in Australia. Taxing capital gains from land value appreciation won't discourage investment in dwellings. We could even use the revenue to directly subsidise new housing by reducing utility development fees. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...
Line chart showing the total number of JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance (Other) recipients from March 2019 to January 2026
JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance (Other) recipients as at January 2026: 1,018,495 (up from 1,009,370 in December).
The <25 and 25-34 years age groups are up 10% since January 2025 (female recipients in these age groups up 11% and 12% respectively).
data.gov.au/data/dataset...
Just how spot on was Jon Kudelka.
Pure and simple genius. #auspol
Every few months, I write an updated, idiosyncratic guide on which AIs to use right now.
My new version has the most changes ever, since AI is no longer just about chatbots. To use AI you need to understand how to think about models, apps, and harnesses. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...
Our online short course on Understanding Poverty, Inequality and Social Disadvantage in Australia is running again in May. More information at www.unsw.edu.au/study/profes...
Note: The submission website is just setup for single paper submissions. If you want to submit a symposium, submit the individual papers to the system and email the organisers directly about the symposium suggestion.
Come join us in Meeanjin (Brisbane) for the next Australian Social Policy Conference!
Or could it be that criminals get worse at committing crime after having cancer, are more likely to get caught, and thus recorded in the crime statistics? This would also be associated with severity of cancer/survival probability.
Look at how being diagnosed with cancer impacts people's involvement in crime!
(Actually 'baby boomers' is too broad. Probably only those born between 1953 and 1960)
This will mean something to baby boomers from Sydney.
Street poster advertising The Angels, Dragon and Mi-Sex on at Selina's 7 February
At Selina's on 7 Feb. But which year?
New GC-CUNY Stone Center Working Paper by Max Longmuir. "Overall, this study highlights the critical interaction between financial wealth, investment behavior, and inequality dynamics."
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David Byrne and band performing Burning Down the House in Sydney, 21 January 2026. (In strong red light with Byrne and two others spotlighted in white)
"Burning down the house"
I wrote this some time ago - with all of us knowing this day would come, and Rob, of course, fighting like the bloody-minded bastard he was to the very end. He irrevocably changed my life - and how our country saw itself. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...
At our next Inequalities Seminar, we are joined by Markus Jäntti 💡
He explores the welfare implications of both inter- and intragenerational mobility and, once family incomes are introduced, assortative mating.
🎟️ Attend in-person: buff.ly/5rtmc94
💻 Attend online: buff.ly/cCavMly
Monopsony, Markdowns, and Minimum Wages Ester Faia, Benjamin Lochner, Benjamin Schoefer #34699 Abstract: This paper presents the first direct test of two interlinked predictions at the core of the monopsony theory of the labor market: (i) that firms exploit wage-setting power by marking down wages below the marginal revenue product of labor, and (ii) that exogenous wage constraints, if binding, eliminate markdowns. Our research design revisits the 2015 introduction of a high minimum wage in Germany. Drawing on a monopsony model, we derive an empirically tractable difference-in-differences specification that provides a quantitative benchmark for the firm-level markdown response. Our main result is that empirical markdowns respond only 0–25% as much as the monopsony model would have predicted. Hence, at least for the labor market segment we study, (i) markdowns largely reflect other distortions than monopsony, (ii) markdowns are mismeasured, (iii) minimum wages induce widespread labor shortages, or (iv) the standard monopsony model does not provide a full, realistic account of ! the labor market.
"... the standard monopsony model does not provide a full, realistic account of the labor market."
#EconSky
www.nber.org/papers/w34699
if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
Would his PhD have passed its 'ethics' review?
New Substack post: The wage compression that persisted.
arindube.substack.com/p/the-wage-c...
