A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media

ABCs Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue

Until January 26 the ABCs Saturday Extrawill be re-broadcasting highlights from 2018.

Other commentary

The future of work and its rewards

In a data-rich set of slidesDavid Autor of MIT shows whats been happening with work in the USA over the last half-century, and the story is more complex than a simple hollowing out of the middle class. Those with college education have prospered, while those with only high school or lower education have not. In fact the real wages of men without college qualifications have fallen, as demand for mid-skill manufacturing, sales and clerical occupations has fallen. These developments have regional consequences: the urban-rural divide widens, because low-skill jobs are increasingly concentrated in non-metropolitan regions. In cities the cost of living is inflated by the presence of high-skill workers, meaning that cities become too expensive for the unskilled who stay in or retreat to the country.

The work of David Autor and his colleague Anna Salomons is summarisedin The Economist(paywall), writing that new types of jobs fall into three broad categories: frontier work, closely associated with new technologies; wealth work, catering to the needs of well-to-do professionals; and last-mile jobs, which Mr Autor characterises as those left over when most of a task has been automated.

A hundred years after the Treaty of Versailles a warning about authoritarian regimes

Writing in _Foreign Affairs_historian Margaret MacMillans article Warnings from Versailles: the lessons of 1919, a hundred years on warns of the risks to world peace when countries turn inward and tend only to their immediate interests, ignoring or underestimating the rise of populist dictators and aggressive powers until the hour is dangerously late. (Foreign Affairsdownload rules allow non-subscribers one to three articles per month.)

Gender and the new authoritarianism

What values do Americas Donald Trump, Polands Victor Orbn, Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, and Brazils Jair Bolsonaro share? In his article The new authoritarians are waging war on womenin _The Atlantic_contributing editor Richard Beinart finds that they all consider the dominance of men over women to be a natural order. He writes that besides their hostility to liberal democracy, the right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women. Defeating the new authoritarianism requires a culture that normalises the empowerment of women.

For once, Dutton says something sensible

Veteran _Canberra Times_journalist Jack Waterfordnotes that much of what Peter Dutton said in his New Year criticismof Turnbull was fair comment. He writes One never got the impression that Turnbull, or his economic ministers, were infused with and excited by ideas, or keen on the processes by which debate sharpened and improved a policy or a program. As Waterford points out, however, Morrison is unable to explain why he had to replace Turnbull, and there is no evidence that his salesmanship is working with the electorate.

Brexit is no big deal Britain has been there before

Writing in Fairfax media, Stephen Holt points out that Brexit is not unprecedented. Five hundred years ago the British Reformation was a definitive separation of that nation from the European mainland. Things eventually settled down in England, after sacking of the monasteries, political purges, deposition of one king and execution of another. That return to normal took only 150 years.

Free books

Over the last twenty years there has been a dearth of works released from copyright, but as from January 1 this year, and every year from now on, each New Years Day will see the release of a years worth of works published 95 years earlier. In addition there will be many other more recently-published works for which copyright hasnt been renewed. The media site _Motherboard_has an easy-to-follow guideon how to access digital versions of out-of-copyright books, with links to various sources. _The Atlantic_has an explanationof the US laws protecting US commercial publishers laws which make Australias tariff protection of the 1950s and 1960s look liberal by comparison.

Remembering Juanita Nielsen

In 1975 the anti-corruption activist and publisher Juanita Nielsen, who had been campaigning against a politically well-connected property developers proposal to build an apartment complex in Sydneys Kings Cross, was kidnapped and murdered. To this day suspicion rests with agents of the developer, but investigation into her death was hindered by police corruption. Running until 23 February at the UNSW Paddington campus the 30 minute video installationThe Beehivecommemorates her life and work.

Government would be so much easier without Parliament

Do you remember Paul Keatings unrepresentative swillattack on the Senate? The Australia Institute has released a report on Australians attitude to the Senate. We like the Senate: most of us (63 per cent) believe it is bad for the country when one party controls both houses of parliament. The report reminds us of the Senates role in thwarting the Coalitions attempt to abolish renewable energy policies, thereby ensuring $23 billion of renewable energy investment that would otherwise have not gone ahead.

Adani a fake mine?

Many Australians concerned for the future of the planet are dismayed to find that Adani has made a great deal of publicity about starting work on the Carmichael Mine. In spite of not finding any financial institution silly enough to lend it money, it claims that it can finance the project from its own resources. But how real are these works? John Quiggin describes the on-site huts and earthmoving equipment as a Potemkin Village, giving an impression of activity, designed to maximize the chance that an Australian government will either pay them to go away or stop the project in a way that leaves open the possibility of a claim under the insidious system of Investor State Dispute Settlement.

Making way for fake data

Politicians find independent statistical agencies painful because they have the unpleasant habit of publishing carefully-researched data on economic and social trends. In a world of postmodern nihilism such data gets in the way of governments efforts to craft positive messages. _The Age_devotes an editorialto a criticism of government funding cuts to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, cuts which have seen many informative statistical collections discontinued.

Real data on superannuation

The Government has released the Productivity Commissions report on superannuation, and the media have generally picked up its major findings, particularly the costs associated with multiple accounts, unnecessary insurance and of course the cost of fund underperformance.

Some findings have received less attention. Default funds have achieved better returns than those where people exercise choice and in almost all categories of investment (equities, property etc) not-for-profit funds (mainly industry funds) have outperformed retail funds, the difference being explained by the not-for-profits making better asset allocation decisions. (Perhaps this latter finding suggests that for-profit funds would do well to boost their economic competence by appointing union representatives to their boards.)

A disappointing aspect of the report is its non-coverage of gender issues in superannuation, and it has little to report on the outcomes for those with broken work experiences.

Is the Liberal Party trying to hasten its own destruction?

In an opinion piece in The Guardian, Liberal Party member and former chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Oliver Yateswrites about the idea among Liberal Party strategists that Peta Credlin should run for the seat of Mallee, to be vacated by the National Partys Andrew Broad following his sugar baby romp on a trip to Hong Kong. She promotes the view that climate change is some left wing conspiracy and that the science is rubbish, he writes. She doesnt represent real liberal views, and if she appeals to whats left of the base, then many people who used to vote Liberal will keep moving for the exits.

Labor’s new friends private health insurers

In 1974 the Whitlam Labor Government went to the extent of calling a double-dissolution election to introduce universal tax-funded health insurance, facing down strong and hysterical opposition from the private health insurers.

Now, in anticipation of winning the election and implementing its proposal to refer the private health sector to the Productivity Commission, Labor has released a discussion papercanvassing views on that reference. The Partys starting point, outlined in that paper, is that private insurance will continue to play a key role in funding health care.

In office from 1983 to 1996 Labor established a solid track record in phasing out high-cost inefficient industries, and it let private health insurance slowly wind down. Once again private health insurers are losing membership its crumblingin the words of Canberra journalist Crispin Hull but this time Labor seems to be determined to rescue it, in spite of its high bureaucratic cost, its annual $11 billion call on the federal budget, and evidence of its role in driving up health care costs, subsidising queue jumping, and worsening the already unjust transfers from younger to older Australians. Private health insurance is the only part of the finance sector that avoided the scrutiny of the Royal Commission into the sector.

The Party is asking for comment (Theres an e-mail link at the end of the document).

Was Friedrich Nietzsche perhaps a friend of Christianity?

On the ABCs _Religion and Ethics Report_Andrew West interviews the psychologist and moral philosopher Jordan Peterson. He has some challenging interpretations of the Book of Genesis and of the work of Nietzsche whose God is dead statement is often misinterpreted. He goes to original translations to re-interpret the aphorism blessed are the meek. (Re-broadcast from 4 April 2018)

Australias conservatives have some ugly friends

The St Kilda rally isnt an abberation. It is the natural conclusion of the moral and intellectual collapse of Australian conservatism is how _The Guardian_contributing editor reportson the far-right rally at St Kilda last weekend. Scott Morrison may have attacked the Nazi symbols and gestures on display at the rally, but Cooke writes that he cannot attack their sentiments because they are shared by people on his front bench.