THE PRODUCTIVITY DEBATE

The people at Business Spectator usually provide interesting economic analyses, but they’ve shown they’re not up to thinking outside the square that has come to constrain productivity and the financial sector.

So, I couldn’t resist commenting on Robert Gottliebson’s (correct) opinion today that “Fortune won’t cut it for the lucky country”.

The incredible blind spot about the manner in which the world’s tax regimes have fostered investment in real estate at the expense of productivity carries through into every quarter of economic analysis, not even rating a mention in the McKell Institute’s recent “Understanding Productivity: Australia’s Choice”.

Chiding several other analysts, the McKell Institute’s report endeavoured in vain to distinguish itself from “neoclassical economists” by recommending productivity be raised in the following less than inspiring fashion. It seems Australia must:-

  1. Innovate or perish
  2. Create better managers
  3. Make better use of skills

Yep. That was it.

Go, McKell Institute!

Don’t worry that the world is on its knees because we’ve taxed doers for doing, and rewarded parasitical plutocrats for stealing our land and natural resource rents!

Why can’t we focus on that idiocy – and try to rectify it along the lines Ken Henry suggested?

[Sigh!]






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