"In the 1985 model the gains could be averaged over five years to stop investors and start-ups being lifted into the top rate for that year... If the Albanese Government wants to negotiate, then perhaps they should consider returning to this element of the 1985 model.

Last one down. RIP Sonny Rollins.

Difficult to overstate how misleading this is. Any % tax on capital gains (sale price less purchase price) will by mathematical construction result in differing rates relative to sale price. Including the existing regime! That’s not a “profound oversight”, that’s what CGT *is*.

Oh wow Microsoft tries to bury a BitLocker bypass and root shell vulnerability, and it looks very much like an intentional backdoor.

The housing affordability crisis isn't caused by a lack of houses, but a surplus of investors. thepoint.com.au/factchecks/2...

"Australia’s income support system has become less suitable for a dynamic economy. Policy has drifted toward restricting retrenchment, rather than supporting workers through unemployment benefits, which have fallen relative to wages for three decades." e61.in/what-ai-job-...

Countries like Australia have also been able to take advantage of US IT productivity growth. Do we face the same political challenges? "The risk of being cut off from strategically important technologies, once minimal, is now very real" paulkrugman.substack.com/p/challengin...

As a coauthor on a forthcoming working paper with some cross-country regressions, I hope I can live up to the admonition that "the conclusions in the manuscript [must be] appropriately calibrated to the [likely weak] strength of the evidence"!

***How to get disability statistics you can trust*** New post on Inequalities: My last post described the 'disability statistics disaster' - now I explain how to fix it inequalities.substack.com/p/disability...

Summary: Don't do it.

Bit worrying that a state premier does not understand how income tax works.

Rainbow Lorikeet eating Bangalow Palm seeds

The 30% minimum tax on (after-inflation) capital gains will close a significant tax loop-hole in Australia

Good write-up of a very interesting IMF paper: "Confounding bankers' assumptions, the RBA's post-COVID rate hikes caused Australians to work more, not less" www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

Electricity and rent increases driving high living cost increases for pensioners and beneficiaries in Australia (5.0%pa vs CPI of 4.6%). www.abs.gov.au/statistics/e...

Scary...

"The [Australian] NDIS currently sits between two models: not a functioning market, and not an actively managed insurance scheme. As a consequence, it has the disciplines of neither" e61.in/more-quasi-t...

“Younger Australians are unlikely to be worse off than their parents over a lifetime – they are simply earning later, with HELP debts, super contributions, and housing costs front-loading pressure... [the] story is... about inequality _within_ the next generation.” e61.in/rethinking-i...

"While both parents matter, the correlation between mothers’ childhood socio-emotional skills and their children’s skills is significantly stronger and more consistent than the father-child connection."

Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.

Kudos to Salvatore Morelli and his tremendous team, at both Roma Tre and @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social for their incomparable contribution to #wealth research. @morellisal.bsky.social @ignacioflores.bsky.social @smaexie.bsky.social @severinrapp.bsky.social @schechtlm.bsky.social and many more.

"China is more powerful economically than the Soviet Union ever was. But ideologically, China has not been able to promote a certain systemic approach to economic and political issues that could be easily replicated elsewhere. "

Anyone else had crazy hallucinations from Zoom's AI meeting summaries? I got this "The group discussed musical performances and musicians, with Bruce expressing appreciation for the talent... particular mention of Lewis's abilities." We didn't discuss this. A leakage from someone else's meeting?

Landlord tax concessions for heat pumps (and I would add air conditioners). While tax breaks for landlords don't usually flow through to renters, I expect subsidies for energy efficient appliances will. reneweconomy.com.au/switchedon-p...

"It seems to have slipped Altman’s mind that in the very metaphor he’s making—he’s comparing AI CEOs rushing to win the AI race to the men striving to wield the rings of power in the Lord of the Rings—the only way to ensure evil doesn’t triumph is to chuck the One Ring itself into Mount Doom."

Smoky sunset over Randwick racecourse yesterday. From hazard reduction burns in the bush around Sydney, now that summer is over.

Dramatic change in the USA over the last 35 years.

New Substack Post. These Republican-leaving States Went Big on Minimum Wages. Here's What Happened to their Restaurant and Retail Jobs.

Did you hear the story of the one man $1.8 billion business built by AI as portrayed in the @nytimes.com? Turns out basically every aspect of that story is bullshit and the story should be retracted.

Some examples I agree with, but not the general principle. In addition to maintaining political support, we should be giving NDIS support to disadvantaged _individuals_ with wealthy families, as well as giving help to parents during the high cost stage of life. theconversation.com/by-avoiding-...

Nature meta-research project puts claims in social-science paper to the test. Refs in last post I'm interested in Econ and Psych so I focused on that: Econ had about the same rate of "not reproducible" analyses as Psych and a worse rate then Political Science.

A striking fact I learnt researching my book: For those in the bottom half, much of the real wage growth between 1979 and 2019 happened over just 7 "tight" years. For top wages, full employment wasn't a big deal. For bottom wages, it was the nearly the whole game.

💲💲💲 New version available: 💲💲💲 Basic income and labor supply: Theory and evidence from an RCT in Germany maxkasy.github.io/home/files/p... #basicincome #ubi

A statement on behalf of the Australian Cartoonists Association regarding James Hillier aka Nordacious and the QLD Government:

"all fortunes are family fortunes, all power is family power, and all status is family status" That's a powerful line

Our paper on Medication Use by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians After a Pharmaceutical Co-Payment Subsidy is now out in @jamahealthforum.com jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

This is not the US. It's Australia. In 2026. #NickHanna

Interesting new bot-detection strategy in online samples: academic.oup.com/jcr/advance-...

Following a tradition means not having to think for oneself: Cosma Shalizi frames artificial intelligence as mechanized tradition.

ABS has developed a new series of measures of labour force underutilisation. Looks at: underemployment (people who want to work more), reduced employment (people working fewer hours than normal), unemployment, and underutilisation (an aggregation of these measures) www.abs.gov.au/articles/und...

Wow (despite the limitations described at the end of the article).

Australian poverty increasing since the pandemic. www.austaxpolicy.com/one-in-seven... @pagdavidson.bsky.social

"The Chinese model, if generalized, poses the genuine threat of locking all of humanity into a perpetual dictatorship... The US has problems that are in many ways the opposite. The society harbours extraordinary centrifugal forces" open.substack.com/pub/josephhe...

"The dystopias we ought fear will be less like 1984 with its all seeing Big Brother, and more like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, in which a bug caught in a teleprinter results in the wrong person being targeted and tormented." www.programmablemutter.com/p/ai-is-a-bu...

On "cognitive surrender" to AI text. "confident outputs are treated as epistemically authoritative, lowering the threshold for scrutiny" (Shaw and Nave)

And 75% chance of ??. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology continues its war on probability.

My colleagues at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Social Policy unit, are seeking a postdoc for 2-3 years. Great opportunity! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

More nonsense from the HIA on capital gains taxes in Australia. Taxing capital gains from land value appreciation won't discourage investment in dwellings. We could even use the revenue to directly subsidise new housing by reducing utility development fees. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance (Other) recipients as at January 2026: 1,018,495 (up from 1,009,370 in December). The <25 and 25-34 years age groups are up 10% since January 2025 (female recipients in these age groups up 11% and 12% respectively). data.gov.au/data/dataset...