Ross Gittins

Financial stress is rising and life satisfaction is falling, but Australians’ discontent runs deeper than household budgets to growing distrust in politics and government.

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Australia cannot make housing more affordable while protecting homeowners from falling prices. The current downturn may reveal how serious politicians really are about fixing the system. (more…)

Australia is running budget deficits. That means today’s taxpayers are not fully paying for the services they receive – and younger generations inherit the debt. (more…)

Australia’s economic history shows that major shocks often come from overseas, but better policy settings over the past three decades have helped keep unemployment, inflation and debt under greater control.

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Weak growth, falling real wages and poor productivity are linked, and one way to force business to invest and improve efficiency may be to lift wages across the economy. (more…)

The focus on productivity as the key to economic growth ignores the fact that we can’t directly observe productivity. We need better ways to measure improvements in overall living standards.
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The Tax Office has a duty to collect what is owed, but rising complaints show the system risks becoming heavy-handed, opaque and too hard to navigate for taxpayers trying to do the right thing. (more…)

The federal budget takes long-avoided steps to curb housing tax concessions, rein in spending growth and reduce intergenerational unfairness – despite the political risks. (more…)

The Reserve Bank has always denied that its manipulation of short-term interest rates to slow or hasten the growth in demand for goods and services plays any part in worsening the cost of home ownership. But I doubt this. (more…)

What is this “abundance” thing that progressive economists are suddenly banging on about after reading the latest American pop economics book? At last, one of them has explained it. (more…)

AI. AI. AI. Maybe if I utter those magic initials one more time, you’ll reach peak ecstasy. Worried about our lack of productivity? Fear not. The economy will soon be rocketing ahead. (more…)

Economists like us to think they’re coolly rational in all things. Nah. They’re just as susceptible to fads and fashions as the rest of us. (more…)

As you may have noticed, the nation’s economists are in a gloomy mood and warning of tough times ahead. (more…)

Ask any businessperson if we should cut the rate of our company tax and, almost to a pale and stale male, they’ll unhesitatingly tell you we should. (more…)

Despite the strong support for tax reform at last month’s economic reform roundtable, perhaps the most important single reform hardly rated a mention: a carbon tax – or, in the economists’ preferred euphemism, “a price on carbon”. (more…)

This is the week to understand something most people don’t: businesses don’t do productivity. (more…)

It’s likely much will be said, but little done, at next week’s economic roundtable. (more…)

Be sure your dodgy modelling will find you out. I’m starting to think economists have become so used to pretending to know more about the economy than they really do, that they don’t notice the way they mislead the rest of us. (more…)

I’m not sure if it’s happening by accident or design, but we may be about to convince ourselves that, though our democracy isn’t nearly as stuffed up as America’s, we’re fast making ourselves ungovernable, unable to agree on how to fix our problems. (more…)