Letter from The Cape Podcast – Episode 15

Episode 15 of my – Podcast – Letter from The Cape – is now available.

In this episode, we consider the recently released White Paper on Full Employment by the Australian government, which purports to define its labour market policy agenda for the foreseeable future. We juxtapose it with the 1945 White Paper on Full Employment, which recognised that the federal government had the spending capacity and the obligation to achieve and sustain full employment. By contrast, the 2023 edition is a tawdry document and reinforces the notion that the maximum employment level is dictated by estimates of the Non-Accelerating-Inflation-Rate-of-Unemployment and that macroeconomic policy will only cause inflation if it tries to drive the unemployment rate down below this level. So it rehearses the standard orthodoxy where microeconomic policies that attack the unemployed are required to reduce the unemployment rate. It is a sad cop out by the Australian government.

Duration: 7:48