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...

Just how spot on was Jon Kudelka. Pure and simple genius. #auspol

Every few months, I write an updated, idiosyncratic guide on which AIs to use right now. My new version has the most changes ever, since AI is no longer just about chatbots. To use AI you need to understand how to think about models, apps, and harnesses. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...

Our online short course on Understanding Poverty, Inequality and Social Disadvantage in Australia is running again in May. More information at www.unsw.edu.au/study/profes...

Come join us in Meeanjin (Brisbane) for the next Australian Social Policy Conference!

Look at how being diagnosed with cancer impacts people's involvement in crime!

At Selina's on 7 Feb. But which year?

New GC-CUNY Stone Center Working Paper by Max Longmuir. "Overall, this study highlights the critical interaction between financial wealth, investment behavior, and inequality dynamics." 👇👇👇

I wrote this some time ago - with all of us knowing this day would come, and Rob, of course, fighting like the bloody-minded bastard he was to the very end. He irrevocably changed my life - and how our country saw itself. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

At our next Inequalities Seminar, we are joined by Markus Jäntti 💡 He explores the welfare implications of both inter- and intragenerational mobility and, once family incomes are introduced, assortative mating. 🎟️ Attend in-person: buff.ly/5rtmc94 💻 Attend online: buff.ly/cCavMly

"... the standard monopsony model does not provide a full, realistic account of the labor market." #EconSky www.nber.org/papers/w34699

if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...

New Substack post: The wage compression that persisted. arindube.substack.com/p/the-wage-c...

Jonas Radl and colleagues show that is actually the case based on a large experiment of 5th graders in two different counties. Moreover, they demonstrate the role of incentives and how incentives have different effects depending on social background ground. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Still at the beach in Australia...

AI might not take our manual jobs. But can our ageing bodies handle it? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...

New job at Cambridge! Professorship of Public Policy www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/profess...

Males get more free time. (The hours add up to over 24, because it restricts to those who participate in the activity. But the gender gap persists when averaged over all). www.abs.gov.au/statistics/p... #ABS

I try to avoid linking to Substacks but this essay is FASCINATING

"parallel trends in the log of an outcome variable precludes parallel trends in levels. The paper closes with an examination of a valiant recent attempt to wriggle out of this troubling functional-form constraint" Looking forward to reading.

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more." pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

"We show that, in finite samples, first-differencing and novel rolling estimators can offer researchers a practical alternative to the fixed effects estimator"