Unemployment kills Australians: Weekly roundup
July 21, 2023
The Voice Yes campaign is actually supported by parliamentarians from all main parties; Unemployment kills Australians; The Fadden by-election no winners, but a strange electorate. Read on for the Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.
The Reserve Bank it has a new boss but is it the same old culture? One more time: inflation has been driven by firms market power, not wages. Are governments game to take on the gambling lobby? Privatisation: cui bono? And, unemployment kills Australians.
Unemployment and underemployment are causes of suicide
Thats the title of a paper by four researchers, from disciplines of mental health and mathematical techniques, published in Science Advances, demonstrating with high confidence that there is a causal link between unemployment (including underemployment) and suicide.
It has long been known that there is a correlation between unemployment and suicide, but as teachers emphasize, correlation does not necessarily signify causation.
Using a technique known as convergent cross mapping, which can reveal causal relationships in noisy time series, the researchers are able to state that 9.5 percent of suicides reported in Australia between 2004 and 2016 resulted directly from labor underutilisation.
They conclude that economic policies prioritisng full employment should be considered integral to any comprehensive national suicide prevention strategy. That means an economist, working for the Reserve Bank or Treasury, should urge policymakers to consider suicide as one of the costs of unemployment.
The authors have a summary of the report in The Conversation, with a discussion about how greater awareness of the consequences of unemployment should shape public policy. They hope to provoke a deeper conversation about the design of the economy and how it values people, beyond simply making money.
The pamphlet a waste of 100 ha of paper. The Yes campaign is actually supported by parliamentarians from all main parties.
The Fadden by-election no winners, but it is a strange electorate. Political opinion polls offer no consolation for the Coalition.
Martin Wolf on civilisation and democracy. The Institute for New Economic Thinking recycles an old but useful idea. Freedom as seen by big business.