Is Australia a high-taxing nation?
No, but tax-to-GDP is a highly misleading measure of the true tax burden.
Latest
When is a recession a recession?
Canada's technical recession, Australia's non-technical recession, and the worst public policy error in recent history.
Killing with kindness
The minimum wage increases that are a boon for some may eventually lead to lost jobs for others.
There will be no AI jobpocalypse
The economy's built-in roadblocks are bad news for anyone expecting an AI productivity miracle or an employment bloodbath.
Efficiency or revenue?
Treasury defends the tax hikes; Australia's economy might be slowing down; and Budget fun across the ditch.
It's not about the water
The arguments against data centres are a classic Gish Gallop designed to rile up emotions and obstruct investment.
A tax on capital is a tax on wages
Australia's capital per worker hasn't grown in a decade, yet Labor's response is to tax it harder.
Nth-best
Treasury shows its work; The term premium returns... or does it; and Time to dust off your paper air-plane skills.
Is there a crisis facing men?
The data on young men is genuinely mixed. You wouldn't know it from the commentary.
Why markets didn't react to Australia's budget
The most controversial budget since 1993, and the bond market didn't bat an eye.
Chiefs of the salary cap
How Australian taxpayers are buying PNG an NRL premiership.
Did Labor just jump the shark?
The next Australian election just went from a sure thing to wide open.
Growth
The one line that matters in Australia's Budget
If you want to know whether a government is leaving the next generation better off, watch what it spends, not what it taxes.
Debt
Why Western Australia is squandering generational wealth
And how to fix it for the future.
Inflation
Call it Jimflation
Australia's inflation is home brewed.
Politics
The intergenerational ruse
The coming budget isn't really about helping young Australians.
Energy
Australia should legalise nuclear
Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Japan are reversing course. Yet Australia is still pretending it has a choice.
Debt
Canada's borrowed wealth
Canada might be getting a sovereign wealth fund. Whether Canadians ever get any wealth out of it is a different question.
Inflation
Australia's coming inflation
The Strait of Hormuz delivered the price shock. Whether it becomes inflation is up to Canberra and Martin Place.
Energy
Gas, taxes, and wishful thinking
Comparing Australia's gas tax to Norway's is a masterclass in false equivalence that ignores physical and economic reality.
Debt
Low debt buys you optionality
Australia has been burning its fiscal buffers in the good times, leaving it with little in the tank for the next real crisis.
Energy
Australia's two fuel crises
How Canberra's response to the first is making the second worse.
Housing
The housing wealth illusion
Australia's $12.3 trillion housing stock isn't a pool of misallocated capital, but a mark-to-market valuation of a policy-induced supply constraint.
Growth
The economists who cried wolf
Argentina under Milei is a case study in how easily economists' politics can override the lessons of their own discipline.