The intro says it all by claiming that the pink batts/home insulation program was a success. Yeah right, just ask the businesses that went bust with piles of suddenly useless insulation, the home owners waiting years to have safety checks or rectification work performed, or the families who lost loved ones from inadequate safety procedures and controls. It was a disaster and Peter Garrett was the scapegoat even though he had tried to warn Rudd of the risks.

Our local public school in country NSW got a library that was ridiculously small at about double the cost of a project home, it was sited in an awkward spot for maximum solar power, which then wasn't installed, all the work was done by people from outside the district and even the local city was overlooked when it was fitted out: everything came from 150 kilometres away.

The BER was only a Revolution in Education Bull. Most was wasted, state schools got half the building per dollar against comparable Catholic schools and often a building that was not wanted. Such top down 5 year, month or in this case 5 minute back of envelope plans always are a waste and no amount of hyperbowl will make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Labor's only legacy (except for the truly great exception of Hawke) has been to leave a mess to cleaned up. The Party needs to find a mechanism to broaden its sources of members beyond patronage and in particular, get some adults in.

Judy, obviously if your process of reasoning is illogical, your construction of the evidence will be illogical.

And that's all you've got.

If you actually thought about your topic instead of just *emoting* about it, you would see how ridiculous it is to claim that any policy was a success on the ground that the beneficiaries were happy with it.

Obviously if we don't count the costs, anything will seem beneficial - durr!

This merely shows the infantile level of moral and economic reasoning that underlies Judy's reasoning, and Stiglitz's too for that matter. (Appeal to absent authority = logical fallacy. You need to be able to justify your argument, not just point to a high priest of the parasite industries preaches that force-based parasitic behaviour is moral and productive.)

This flawed intellectual method underlies all socialist reasoning. They take from group A and give to group B, and then claim that the result confers a benefit on society, without ever dealing with the obvious possibility whether it was an act of mere pillage. When questioned, they merely repeat the method of baldly asserting social benefits without ever coming to terms with the questions of value involved in their violence- and fraud-based redistributions.

Nor has Judy addressed the social costs of the forced indoctrination of children into her anti-economic anti-freedom state-worshipping irrational superstition.

Your challenge Judy is to show that the policy conferred a net social benefit, compared to what would have obtained in the absence of the policy, accounting for the counter-factual in units of a lowest common denominator, and showing without a double standard how you justify the unprovoked aggression as the value basis of it all.

Go ahead. All you're doing now is making a fool of yourself without apparently any shame or understanding.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/chris-pyne-and-ber-waste/

This is a piece I wrote last year, it gives facts instead of whinges by liberal party nitwits.

Excellent article. Very well argued.

As Rodney Tiffin demonstrated, most of the furore was generated by the Murdoch press with no valid reason:

http://inside.org.au/a-mess-a-shambles-a-disaster/

@Mikko, can you see how your comments simply illustrate this point by both Professor Tiffin and Ms Crozier?

Outside the Murdoch media is there any actual evidence that the insulation scheme was other than an outstanding success?

@Candide, can you please advise the name of that school? As a journo I have followed up every such example given in forums such as this. All of them so far have turned out to be baseless.

May I please follow up this example also? Will advise the upshot here.

Thanks, Candide.

@McCackie and Jardine K. Jardine:

Wondering if either of you actually understand the purpose of the scheme. It appears not.

It was absolutely NOT to provide school facilities on a needs basis in a cost effective manner. Don’t let the media suck you in.

Re: “Your challenge Judy is to show that the policy conferred a net social benefit, compared to what would have obtained in the absence of the policy …”

Correct.

This she did - paragraphs 15 and 16.

The main purpose of the stimulus packages was to get $42 billion into circulation as rapidly as possible as economies around the world were tanking. This they did. All of the $42 billion ended up precisely where it was intended — in Australia’s steadily growing economy.

Australia’s economy is now number one in the world. Thanks primarily to the stimulus packages of 2008-10.

The net social benefit has been to secure jobs, incomes, wage rises, GDP growth, productivity increases, lower taxes, low inflation, low interest rates and the highest standard of living of any nation in the world.

As a bonus, the nation now has more fixed assets. And as an extra minor side effect - school kids and teachers have much better facilities.

Cheers,

Alan

Thank you, Marilyn and Alan for some sensible, reflective, appropriate comments. The BER worked really well: it got a lot of money into the community quickly, kept a lot of tradespeople working when there might not have been work for them and also filled some of the infrastructure deficit inherited from an earlier government. Probably the best return on investment in the last 20 years. Win! Win! Win!

Jardine K. Jardine "Your challenge Judy is to show that the policy conferred a net social benefit, compared to what would have obtained in the absence of the policy"

Let me see: I'm a self-funded retiree on a defined benefit superannuation and a part pension. Every time it was due it was paid on the dot. Not a cent missing. All the public institutions that I rely on continued to work and remained in public hands. The local school was substantially upgraded. I had medical attention I could afford when I needed it. There was about 5% unemployment compared with well over double in Europe and America where those policies were not followed. My daughter has just returned from America which she found so run-down that bits of the Holland Tunnel kept falling to the roadway and rusty iron kept falling from the bridges. When the Global Financial Heist struck Australia I knew my bank deposit was still safe. Benefit after benefit for ordinary people in Australia - and at the end of it all a triple A economic rating.

Looking at Athens, and Madrid, and middle England, and Detroit - indeed almost anywhere in the developed world outside Australia - I thank my lucky stars we had a government that swung into action looking after US, the people, rather than the thieves who created the Global Financial Heist, and their tame political party. Murdoch's media have bought themselves a government like the ones that have emptied Treasuries and ruined the lives of millions overseas. If the voters fall for it then ruin looms for Australia too, and no doubt many of those who voted them in will blame the victims for the consequences.

Alan

Your method is just as illogical as Judy’s. She did not identify net social benefits. She merely pointed to benefits of the scheme and ASSUMED – as you did – that THEREFORE it must be justified. Anti-economic, confused, irrational.

You have failed to understand that you need to show a causal link between the policies in issue and the benefits you claim from them. Merely pointing to economic activity following government’s redistributive policies doesn’t do that, because you haven’t that any benefit
a) was because of rather than despite the policy or
b) was worth it considering the costs.

It’s a complete failure on your part to understand the basic economics in issue. You haven’t given any reason whatsoever for thinking that stimulus policies create ANY net social benefits, rather than being mere corrupt looting.

It’s easy to disprove your dopey assumption that government creates economic benefits by multiplying money substitutes. If it’s true, why not just print a single piece of paper the fiat value of which is as much wealth as will abolish world poverty? And if it's true, why only government? Why not legalise counterfeiting?

You don’t have an economic theory, what you have is a cargo cult. But at least the original Melanesian tribal cargo cultists had the excuse that the wealth they imagined themselves creating by their rituals, came from outside their societies! You don’t even have that excuse. You talk of getting money “into circulation” without understanding that all the relevant money was at all times in someone’s cash balance, and all the relevant physical capital was already devoted to uses that society valued more highly, otherwise no monetary policy would have been necessary to access it.

“Australia’s economy is now number one in the world. Thanks primarily to the stimulus packages of 2008-10…”

Superstition.

According to your confused illogic Australia would be wealthier if it blew up a major city. Think of all the money that would put into “circulation”. Think of all the economic activity that would "stimulate".

The naysayers mouth almost verbatim the unfounded lies that went unchallenged by the anti ALP media in particular News Corp
"Propaganda must not address the truth objectively...the receptive powers of the masses are very restricted,and their understanding feeble... slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward."
It may suprise some that Rupert Murdoch's mother was Jewish he was raised by his mother as a Jew and he has close ties to high ranking Israeli politicians and high profile Jewish business people.
Ironic how he uses Adolph Hitlers 'Mein Kampf' as an operating manual for his manipulation of political commentary in Australia

Come on people, the whole idea was to pay back supporters & benefactors. That is why none of the original contractors ever did anything but subcontract the work, after skimming 25% off the top.

This happened another time or two before any builder got a contract.

Just how stupid do you think the public really are?

Yes some are slow to even look, but once they wake up, watch out. How about a 6% swing?

Emperor Julian

You can see, can’t you, that it would be stupidly illogical to reason thus:
“The high priest said we should throw virgins into the volcano to improve crop fertility, and the proof that he was right, is that after we threw virgins into the volcano, crop fertility improved.”?

Well, in its logical structure, the process of reasoning that Alan, and you, and Judy and Stiglitz are all following is EXACTLY THE SAME.

When we say it terms of the high priest, and throwing virgins into the volcano, you can all see it’s illogical. But as soon as we substitute high officials of the State for the high priest, and stimulus policies for throwing virgins into the volcano, and the supposed net social benefits of stimulus policies for improved crop fertility, all of a sudden you can’t see it.

The issue is whether stimulus policies produce net social benefits, or are just corrupt state-perpetrated pillaging.

The illogic in your reasoning is:
“I observe beneficial things happening after government stimulus policies, THEREFORE
a) the stimulus policies caused the benefit (throwing virgins into the volcano improves crop fertility);
AND
b) we conclude that the costs were not greater than the benefits by simply IGNORING the costs (only the benefit of improved crop fertility is considered; not the cost in terms of throwing virgins into the volcano).

At no stage in any of Alan’s articles, in Judy’s articles, or in Stiglitz’s works do they address these logical flaws which invalidate their line of reasoning.

You know Stalin famously referred to “useful idiots”? These are the people who aided him in his corrupt abuse of power by genuinely believing in the desirability of socialism.

You, Alan and Judy are such useful idiots. The irony is that the very people who allege the necessity of the State’s monopolistic manipulations of the money supply, are the same idiots who then rightly complain that the banking system is rigged so that the State corruptly benefits the big banks and corporations by diverting to them a river of treasure fraudulently misappropriated from the working class!

What I also find ironic is that the BER and insulation project were done in accordance with what LNP promulgate.
Allow private enterprise to do the job with minimum regulation and it will be done in a more efficient manner.
When you look at the research/facts with regard to both projects there is evidence of price gouging, shoddy workmanship and unsafe work practices and if it suits your political agenda overlook a 97% satisfaction rate for BER and a reduction in house fires caused by electrical faults in house roofs to name just 2 of the benefits

"What I also find ironic is that the BER and insulation project were done in accordance with what LNP promulgate.
Allow private enterprise to do the job with minimum regulation and it will be done in a more efficient manner."

More blatant stupidity from the socialists. You favour a socialist redistribution scheme, and when it results in exactly the evaluational chaos that libertarian theory correctly predicts, and your theory completely fails to predict, you blame it on capitalism!

The entire BER was a socialist exercise. It involved the State taking the money, and diverting the physical wealth, from its private owners, and expending it on projects and favourites which were politically and bureaucratically decided.

How could you fail to understand this quintessential point?

So far as the LNP promulgate such schemes, then they're promulgating socialism and you're wrong. And so far as the LNP don't promulgate them, then they're promulgating capitalism and you're wrong.

"When you look at the research/facts with regard to both projects there is evidence of price gouging, shoddy workmanship and unsafe work practices..."

More confused illogic. The whole things was state-sponsored, and would not have taken place otherwise. Stop trying to squirm out of the responsibility for your failed ideology. The libertarian argument against these stupid schemes is precisely that they will result in evaluational chaos. Your proving my argument while disproving your own.

"if it suits your political agenda overlook a 97% satisfaction rate for BER and a reduction in house fires caused by electrical faults in house roofs to name just 2 of the benefits"

You're back to pointing to improved crop fertility - mere benefits - without taking into account the costs and opportunity costs in terms of the forced sacrifice of human values and welfare that were the basis of the entire exercise.

I doubt you guys can be as ignorant and illogical as you're pretending. Obviously you're starting out with a purely ideological commitment to socialism, and then working backwards to try to scrape together any justification you can, no matter how self-contradictory you're proving yourself to be in the process.

Hi Jardine K Jardine,

This is your lucky day! As it happens just this week this whole topic is being thrashed out in substantial depth. Right here at OLO.

Start here: "So what really did save Australia's economy?"

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15380

Then read the discussion following with Ludwig, Yabby and Grim23.

Then go to this: “The power of the Murdoch media to manipulate”

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15412

Then see the discussion following with Yabby and Rhian.

We have resolved all the issues you raise here in this thread.

We have seen clearly how through the GFC Australia rose from 10th-ranked economy in the world in 2007 – behind Iceland, Singapore, China, United Arab Emirates, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, Taiwan and Hong Kong - to top of the world now.

Pretty impressive social benefits resulting from that, huh?

We have discussed at length the logical question of coincidence versus cause. We agree simultaneity does not imply causality.

Re: "According to your confused illogic Australia would be wealthier if it blew up a major city. Think of all the money that would put into 'circulation'. Think of all the economic activity that would 'stimulate'.”

Correct about economic activity. That would go up. But incorrect about net assets. They would go down.

What we want is for both to go up - as happened with the pink batts and the BER.

Happy to continue the discussion here or at either of the other pages.

Cheers, Jardine.

Alan

Writing this on the eve of the election, it's all a moot point now as the election is a slam-dunk for the Murdoch-Coalition.

It really angers me that these setting-the-record-straight fact-checks are finally appearing now, when they should have been appearing regularly for the last three years. The ALP should have been doing this for itself long before now, but it appears to have been as cowed by the Murdoch Press lies as everyone else was. Or perhaps it assumed that the Australian electorate was far more mature and astute than it actually is (a mistake the Murdoch-Coalition NEVER makes).

Now it's too little too late.

I suppose we can all take a bow that we have pulled off one of the greatest acts of mass electoral stupidity in modern politics - i.e. to chuck out a government that handed us the world's best economy during one of the world's worst recessions.

So let me get this right
Are you saying it is better to have a budget surplus(that was achieved in the main by selling income generating public assets at fire sale prices in a voodoo economics exercise) "for a rainy day" and let the country spiral into an uncontrolled recession and bugger the consequence?
I can tell by the cheap attempts at insult that you aren't sure of your own stance.
The money that was spent on these projects belongs to all Australians and held in trust and to be used in an appropriate manner.
Before you slag off, I happily pay the top rate of income tax and am of the opinion that the economy given the natural resources we have in Australia should always be running in deficit.
As Alan mentioned earlier the whole basis of the exercise was get that money out there. The Global Financial Heist (thanks Emperor Julian) wasn't just a rainy day it was a monsoonal downpour

Killarney
Don't get too angry, there will be a huge blood letting regardless of the result. If half of what is getting around in the Bloggosphere is true,I don't think a LNP government will be able to survive the blood loss.
I have a feeling some have been holding back on the allegations to keep their own chances of election alive and to stop the Murdoch damage control apparatus getting to work.It is a very powerful yet at the same time fragile machine.
I'm going to Get Up and hand out score cards tomorrow every little bit helps.
By the way I Pre-polled in Swan today and had to queue at the door for about 15 minutes and the ALP crew were handing out a lot more cards than the LNP crew

I can see the Left is practicing there excuses for todays unintended consequences, Western Sydney truly despises your arrogant stupidity and Murdoch is not a factor. A lie, is a lie, is a lie and the Carbon lie shattered any trust of Lefties. The Rudd / Gillard / Rudd maelstrom of lies, incompetence and death generated by the no-hoper, non-worker Leftie class just proved they offer no hope for their children, apart from making it too expensive to wash them every day. A regular shower is not an "Enviro-crime".

You seem to forget that many of your despised Westies (anyone not near King street) have real skills and know first hand what a bodgie job the BER was. Government by "Thought Bubble" (a polite way of saying brain fart) as exemplified by moving Garden Island, NBN, Cash for Clunkers ad nauseam needs no BA to be recognised as stupidity.

Alan

When we talk of trying to explain a set of facts or data by the most parsimonious hypothesis, it is so obvious that it should go without saying, that the hypothesis must be logically coherent in the first place. If it confuses cause and effect, or assumes its conclusion in its premises, or unthinkingly assumes some supernatural agent – all of which you are doing – then we don’t even get to the stage of construing the evidence. The theory is just nonsense.

You can’t just ASSUME that stimulus policies create net social benefits and more than that throwing virgins into the volcano improves crop fertility. But that’s all your cited sources do, and all you’ve done. I don’t care how many priests or co-religionists you can cite incanting the same liturgy, you need to show reason.

I’m not going to be sent on an errand to construct your argument for you. I have shown that your argument is illogical, and you haven’t been able to defend it except by more illogic, so you’re proving my point, not yours.

The statistical methodology you have chosen does not and is not capable of proving causation. If you don’t understand why, let me know, and I’ll explain it to you.

And you still have given no reason whatever that the stimulus policies created net social benefits, all you’ve done is point to benefits and ignore the entire issue of opportunity costs (again!).

Economics by definition concerns scarce resources. Your theory would only make sense if some fructifying agent were introduced into the economy from a moonbeam. You can’t just conjure away the natural scarcity of resources by coerced redistributions and claim you’ve made society better off without accounting for the obvious downsides. It’s not a theory of economics or justification of policy; it’s just a dream of magic pudding.

And that’s all you and Judy et al have got: mindless repetition of a meme that you picked up somewhere without understanding the logical implications of what you’re arguing.

Hello again,

@Killarney, re: “these setting-the-record-straight fact-checks … should have been appearing regularly for the last three years. The ALP should have been doing this long before now”

The ALP is actually pretty good at regular reports and media releases. I subscribe here in France. The problem is your media suppresses anything positive for Labor or negative for the Coalition.

@Phil R: Precisely!

@McCackie, do you realise how hilarious it is to read “Murdoch is not a factor” in the same post as “what a bodgie job the BER was”?

Where, apart from in Murdoch or Murdoch-inspired outlets is there any evidence whatsoever that the BER was other than an outstanding success?

Do you accept that the purpose of the expenditure was to rescue Australia’s economy from the sudden 4th quarter downturn in 2008?

Do you accept the Australian economy was then 10th-ranked in the world – and is now first?

If not, which economy do you think is faring better, McCackie?

@Jardine, re: “You can’t just ASSUME that stimulus policies create net social benefits”

Correct. We don’t. We evaluate the actual measurement of net benefits by the Bureau of Statistics, the Finance Department, Treasury, Infrastructure Australia and elsewhere.

Re: “And you still have given no reason whatever that the stimulus policies created net social benefits …”

The theoretical foundation is straight, conventional, boring Keynesian economics, Jardine. The theory is, in turn, bolstered by examining the experience of all nations through the current global downturn.

Straight, boring scientific method.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz summarised it neatly:

“Kevin Rudd, who was prime minister when the crisis struck, put in place one of the best-designed Keynesian stimulus packages of any country in the world. He realized that it was important to act early, with money that would be spent quickly, but that there was a risk that the crisis would not be over soon. So the first part of the stimulus was cash grants, followed by investments, which would take longer to put into place.

“Rudd’s stimulus worked: Australia had the shortest and shallowest of recessions of the advanced industrial countries.”

Cheers,

Alan

Alan

That's a fail.

Statistics doesn't prove causation, it only proves correlation. To show causation you need a theory, but you've earlier denied that your theory is Keynesian, and now you're contradicting yourself.

It is mere gizzard-lore to point to a great heap of statistics and say it supports your superstitious belief that stamping pieces of paper with a special sign creates real physical wealth that makes society as a whole better off.

But in any event, you haven't even done that! All you're done is referred to absent authority, alleging that someone else understands it, someone else knows, someone else has worked it out, and that's how you know. That's your method, which is not the scientific method at all, it's the *religious* method. Stiglitz merely makes the same unfounded assumption in favour of Keynes's nonsense that you do. Prove it - *without* appeal to absent authority.

If the purpose of the exercise is not necessarily to provide goods economically, but to stimulate spending even if it's wasteful, then why not blow up a city? This would "stimulate" a lot of "spending" and then you'd get "jobs" for all those builders. Why not legalise counterfeiting? That would get money "spent quickly", wouldn't it?

You have also completely failed to take into account the coercive nature of taxation and monetary policy when alleging the balance of values, and which disproves you theory, oops, that's non-theory.

Thanks for proving my point. All you've got is an authority-based anti-economic irrational belief system that wasting wealth on a grand scale makes society richer. That's why you think that gross over-spending on poor quality buildings, that people aren't willing to pay for, and burning houses makes society economically better off! It's laughable nonsense.

Hello again JKJ,

No, the Nobel Prize winners still make the best sense of things, it seems.

Although you and I don’t actually disagree about all that much really.

Re: “Statistics doesn't prove causation, it only proves correlation.”

Correct.

Re: “To show causation you need a theory, but you've earlier denied that your theory is Keynesian, and now you're contradicting yourself.”

I don’t actually have a personal theory, JK. The one that seems to fit best is a modern version of Keynesian economics as expounded by Stiglitz, Krugman and others, including Australia’s Treasury, Finance and Reserve Bank.

Re: “All you've done is referred to absent authority, alleging that someone else understands it, someone else knows, someone else has worked it out, and that's how you know.”

Maybe. But I've done the spreadsheets confirming Australia’s economy is now in better shape than any other economy ever. That’s on income, growth rate, wealth, employment, government debt, inflation, taxation, economic freedom and credit ratings.

If you believe there has ever been a better-managed economy, then you are most welcome to suggest one, JK.

Re: “If the purpose of the exercise is not necessarily to provide goods economically, but to stimulate spending even if it's wasteful, then why not blow up a city?”

Because that is NOT the purpose of the exercise at all, JK, as explained before.

Destroying and replacing assets creates work. But it does not build net assets. We have to achieve both. Waste must be managed.

Blowing up cities is stupid. Building school facilities is intelligent, as Judy has shown. So are constructing a broadband network, roads, ports and railways and insulating buildings.

Re, “You have also completely failed to take into account the coercive nature of taxation and monetary policy when alleging the balance of values, and which disproves you theory, oops, that's non-theory.”

Not at all. They are coercive. That does not disprove anything really.

Anyway, get back to us with a better-managed economy when you get a moment, JK, if you can.

Thanks.

Cheers,

AA

Well, heavens, you've all been busy while I was offline! I don't imagine for one moment it will create an instant conversion complete with angelic choir, but do look at the various links provided by Alan, detailing economic issues and the influence of Murdoch on perceptions, or to Marilyn Shepherd's link to a previous article on the success of the BER, complete with nice pics.

I am bemused, of course, by Jardine K Jardine's frequent suggestions that blowing up a city would have had the same stimulatory effect as what was in fact done. Not quite. Labor's stimulus did not entail millions of mangled people all requiring rather expensive hospitalisation. Maybe that's the difference between Labor and LNP governments. Foresight. Not to mention a belief in building infrastructure rather than destroying it. O, and there's social responsibility.

I would be fascinated to hear the theories on how austerity measures help during a financial crisis. When that PhD student in America so easily discovered fudged data backing up papers espousing the virtues of the austerity approach, there was a very amusing episode of the Colbert Report. Hilariously, the austerity approach was described as when you keep sacking people until they get a job.

To those who expostulated about the BER's cost - I did deal with that in the article. Currently in Australia, govt-built school buildings have stringent standards applied that others don't have. Reflects the direct responsibility the govt has for kids in public schools.

Speaking of infrastructure, I understand we just passed Mongolia to become 50th in the world for internet speeds. Except for downloading, where we are a little slower than that.And the LNP's broadband version proposes speeds already outmoded overseas. I wonder if we will indeed end up with a two-tier system where some now have and will retain the fast and competitive version, and others will not but could pay thousands to have their LNP version upgraded to the Labor equivalent. Or will the LNP govt will suddenly discover they are 'forced' to complete the rollout after all?

Alan
More circular reasoning, ho hum. At no stage have you given any *reason* for the *economic* issue, whether the observed benefits were because of, or despite policy action.

The "best-managed economy" approach assumes that if something economically good happened, it must automatically be because of government. So you're back to trying to squirm out of your nutty logic that full socialism would be more productive than a system based on private property.

Merely *repeating* your fallacious methodology and evasions doesn't prove your argument. It just means you're wrong.

jcro
Don't think it went unnoticed how you didn't provide any reason for your ASSUMPTIONS that stimulus policies create net benefits for society as a whole. But no doubt argument at the level that people opposed to your cargo cult are in favour of mass murder, is more at your intellectual level.

All
It's not some kind of strange coincidence that the arguments of the Keynesians
a) circularly assume that government has some kind of unexplained mystical fructifying power, without EVER AT ANY STAGE addressing the obvious logical possibility that this belief is false; and
b) completely ignore the blatant conflict of interest in all the major proponents of this [non-]theory, who just happen to be government-funded!

Obviously, at the level of self-interested acolytes and sycophants, you have no trouble passing off this dodgy snake-oil as panacea. The only reason it exists is not because its proponents can defend it - as we have just seen, they can't.

Keynesianism exists only because of the symbiosis by which the high priests make a living preaching to the masses that Pharaoh makes the rivers to flow; while the corrupt elites and political favourites pay for this convenient ideological smoke-screen to fund their above-market privileges.

Notice how nothing that the leftists have said in this thread has given any rational defence of their own claims, or addressed the Austrian-school's demolishing critique of it?

Jo, you're displaying your own economic illiteracy in your last two paragraphs. I know you don't understand it, because if you did, you wouldn't say it.

You see the original economic problem is that resources are scarce. If resources were infinite, this problem wouldn't arise. We could fund this important thing, and that important thing, for example education and broadband without anyone suffering a lesser satisfaction of wants.

But because resources are not infinite, that means we are always confronted with the problem of which values are more important to satisfy.

But obviously if you don't count the costs, anything will seem to be beneficial! Even you understand this, because it's the true idea underlying your stupid gibe about "mangled bodies".

So it is NEVER a justification of ANY policy to simply point to the benefits, and assume that this disposes of all issues in your favour. It's just simply infantile.

It's like when I was a kid, I used to say to my mother "Mu-um? Can we have this?"
And she'd say "No."
And I'd say "O-oh? Why no-ot?"
And she'd say "Because. We don't have enough money."
And I'd say "But why can't you just get money out of the bank?"

That is the infantile, primitive level of economic theory, or rather non-theory, at which you, and Alan, and all Keynesians, are operating.

Instead, you're just looking at some benefit that the government has paid for by taking the money from somewhere else, and AT NOT STAGE turning your mind to whether the social values that were perforce sacrificed, by withdrawing the funds from some other usage, were worth it, even in your own terms.

For example if faster broadband is achieved, but only at the cost of worse education, you are at a loss to defend your own assertions.

Your only way out of this, consistent with your own argument, is to allege that society would be better off if the government confiscated THE WHOLE of the product of society, and unilaterally decided how to dispose it.

Sorry but it's just sheer idiocy, and it doesn't matter if you don't understand that, it remains incoherent babbling on the part of anyone who asserts it without showing how you took the sacrificed values and opportunity costs into account, which neither you, Alan, Stiglitz or Keynes have ever done.

Go ahead. Show us your workings.

Hi JKJ,

Re: “At no stage have you given any *reason* for the *economic* issue, whether the observed benefits were because of, or despite policy action.”

Econometrics answers questions like: What happened? How? How can we do things with different outcomes?

The question Why is ultimately a metaphysical one. Comes down to human nature and why people were created or evolved as we did.

Re: “The 'best-managed economy' approach assumes that if something economically good happened, it must automatically be because of government.”

Not at all. Assumes nothing. Rather, looks at all the possible explanations, examines other comparable economies, looks back through time, considers the various theoretical explanatory frameworks, applies trial and error, and then harnesses reason and evidence to assess the best explanation of the observed phenomena.

Vastly different from assumption, JK. The opposite, in fact.

Re: “full socialism would be more productive than a system based on private property.”

The best fit seems to be a mixed economy with some decisions made by governments, others left entirely to the free market and some made via a combination of both.

Re: “Keynesianism exists only because of the symbiosis by which the high priests make a living preaching to the masses …”

Not at all. Keynesianism provides the theoretical underpinning for the best economies in the world.

Most communities across the globe have workers who want jobs, salaries, job security, holidays and various benefits and then eventually want to retire happy and comfortable. They also have enterprising people who want to invest, start businesses, make a profit, get rich and retire happy and wealthy.

Everyone wants shelter, good food, security for the family, education for the kids, leisure, and entertainment.

Of all societies in the world today – some say all societies ever – Australia is now providing all these most effectively and efficiently.

One of the observable reasons for this is Australia’s appropriate response to the 2008 downturn. The BER and the pink batts - as the author here affirms - have been shown to be vital elements of that response.

You should be celebrating this, JK.

Cheers,

Alan

More circularity and appeal to authority, ho hum. It's enough to dispose of your entire argument to point out that science does not and cannot rest on logical fallacies, and that's all you've got.

Thus the BER was as wasteful, corrupt, parasitic and destructive as it seems, and the true test of its supporters' claims is whether they would have paid for it voluntarily. Obviously they wouldn't, or the whole discussion would be redundant

Hi again JKJ,

No, not at all.

There’s no circularity. We start with the open question: What do citizens require of their economy?

Then move to: How do the various governments around the world fare in meeting those requirements?

Then, eventually: Is Australia the most successful economy in the history of the world in terms of meeting the specified needs of its citizens? Yes or no?

If no, which economy is? Or was?

And, if yes: What were the specific strategies the Australian Government deployed differently from all other governments during the global financial crisis to have its economy rocket to the top of the rankings during that period?

Where is the circularity, JK?

No appeal to authority either. Simple observation and measurement.

No logical fallacies either.

Win, win, win!

So you really can cheer up. JKJ. No need whatsoever to be so tetchy.

Cheers,

Alan

Alan is absolutely right. It is a simple fact that, using all measurable elements, there was a crisis, and a solution to it that worked.

Delving through the jumble-sale of Jardine's arguments, I can only surmise that you don't feel simple success - saving jobs and the economy - is or should be the aim. And I feel you pull yourself up short here and there, e.g. the mother whose child wants money for something probably houses her child via a mortgage. Willing to bet.

I continue to be reminded of that description of austerity as a way of countering economic crisis: that's when you keep sacking people until they get a job. I won't insult you by explaining why this would be silly. Though I will point out again that, silly or not, it's what - until Australia demonstrated how the opposite works - other countries were doing as a response to the GFC, with disastrous results.