Tag: trickle-down-economics

The Australian prime minister wants to ‘provoke the “animal spirits” in the economy by removing regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to investment.’ He says he wants to get Australians off the economic sidelines and on the field again. But beyond the first stage of the proposed tax cuts, it’s business as usual: deregulation and trickle-down-economics. Let’s leave aside for the moment the compelling evidence that trickle-down-economics is an abject failure. Let’s speak instead about deregulation. The Banking Royal Commission found that the combination of weak regulation and poor enforcement were significant contributors to the sector’s staggering misconduct. Yet it would be unsurprising if, after voting against holding the royal commission twenty-six times, the government now simply disregards its recommendations for better regulation. Meanwhile, residential buildings in Sydney and Melbourne are beginning to reveal the costs of privatising the regulation of the building industry, when inspections and compliance were taken away from government officers and handed over to private contractors. To remove the...