I have very little time today to write, first a very long flight and then preparation for a major release tomorrow of our latest Employment Vulnerability Index (EVI), which measures the risk of localised communities in Australia of unemployment as the economy slows. We have a very neat mapping tool and I will write about that tomorrow once the press launch occurs (first thing). But I am also working on various other papers and, as usual, have become immersed in the Phillips curve. I remember when I first started by PhD at the University of Manchester in the early 1980s, my then supervisor said to me on the first day that once I started modelling inflation and unemployment (the Phillips curve) I would never stop. Among other truths he uttered during my time in that dank part of the world that statement was spot on. Every now and then I return to the topic and update, revise, re-create and (sometimes) even innovate. So today’s blog is just a collection of snippets of the more accessible things I have been working on over the last few days. It starts with a graph that appeared in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook in April 2013. Then follow the graphs. Conclusion: The NAIRU as estimated is a very dangerous concept for the well-being of ordinary people.

The opening paragraph read “National debt will continue to balloon throughout the first term of the Coalition government, despite harsh spending cuts to be identified by a Commission of Audit, a crackdown on public service jobs, and a promise that government would be smaller”. Of-course, the journalist meant to say “because of” rather than “despite” but his neo-liberal keyboard thwarted his better understanding. The article was about the debate now in full swing about our debt ceiling. That’s right, suddenly, Australia has a debt ceiling debate. As if the nonsense in the US wasn’t enough. We had to show the world how stupid we are as a nation by having our own ceiling and then spawning a debate about, which then sees salivating journalists chasing politicians around asking them all sorts of questions about increasing it etc. None of the above has any foundation in economics yet will lead to poor policy choices being taken which will undermine social and economic prosperity. What a vacuous world politics and the industry that is fed by it really is!

Australians have a history of being prone to a syndrome, which social anthropologists refer to as – cultural cringe. It’s a very nasty condition an “internalised inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries”. Not very attractive. Some might say it is a “fundamental element of Australian self-identity”. I don’t intend to write about that though – just observe that it exists and explains why scores of Australians have to “go overseas” and then come back again before recognition is forthcoming (for example, do PhD programs abroad when there is no evidence that they are better). Anyway, this syndrome revealed itself again this week when our politicians clearly felt they were being too sane and so decided to follow the lunacy of the politicians in the US and beat up our own little debt ceiling crisis. It just confirms that we are all living in the Land of Smoke and Mirrors and the Martians are embarrassed for us.