Evatt journals > Volume 16

News & Views

Three landmark 2016 reports
Inequality and productivity, trade, and the national accounts. More

Trade after Trump
Telling the truth has become a revolutionary act, says Melissa Parke. More

Wages
World earnings growth lowest since 2012, reports the UN. More

Evatt AGM

President’s report 2016
Christopher Sheil review’s the year. More

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New life members
Jeannette McHugh and Bruce Childs honoured at Evatt AGM. More

News & Views

The US election

Thomas Piketty on globalisation post-Trump. More
Bill Shorten draws the lessons of Michigan, Ohio & Pennsylvania. More
The Obama coalition can still work, argues Robert Borosage. More
The United States needs a movement, writes Chris Lehmann. More

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Inequality

Andrew Leigh counts the cost of inequality. More
New research: as Australia’s cities grow, so does inequality. More
Peter Barnes explains how to create a bottom-up stimulus machine. More

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Sydney Peace Prize

Naomi Klein’s lecture on accepting the 2016 prize. More

News & views

An inheritance tax on the Top 5%
Frank Stilwell discusses an inheritance tax on Weekend Sunrise. More

An Australian inheritance tax?
An inheritance tax makes perfect sense, says Thomas Piketty. More

Evatt on Piketty’s Australian visit at the Conversation:

• Piketty challenges us to consider if we need to rein in wealth inequality, by Frank Stilwell More
• Is Piketty’s ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ really the most unread bestseller? by Christopher Sheil More

News, views & papers

Evatt’s international legacy
Andrew Mack imagines a more independent foreign policy. More

The case for openness
Chris Bowen looks at the other side of the coin. More

The Euro, globalisation & democracy
Joseph Stiglitz speaks with Richard Eskow about his new book. More

Piketty & his work

Piketty’s political economy
Review article by Christopher Sheil. More

Piketty v. Marx
Piketty points to distribution, Marx to production, explains Russell Jacoby. More

The book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
All the links to the book’s reception, interviews, discussion, and everything else. More

Has capitalism run its course?
A conversation between David Graeber and Thomas Piketty. More

Piketty, inequality & Australia

The Wealth of the Nation
Adopting some key parts of Piketty’s analytic framework, Evatt’s new report marshals the available evidence to show the clearest possible current picture of wealth inequality among Australian households. More
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Contesting inequality
Has Australia arrived at a turning-point, asks Frank Stilwell. More

Battlers & billionaires
Australia’s egalitarian ethos is endangered, warns Andrew Leigh. More

Evatt & inequality elsewhere

Land of the fair go no more
Christopher Sheil and Frank Stilwell at The Conversation. More

Wealth inequality in Australia
Frank Stilwell at Progress in Political Economy. More

The US election

Robert L. Borage reviews Hillary & Bill

America’s choice. More
The Big Dawg still can howl. More

Obama’s oration

The president takes a long view. More

Proud to stand with her

Bernie Sanders’ speech. More

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Iraq II

The Chilcot Report
Has Australia arrived at a turning-point, asks Frank Stilwell. More

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Inequality​

Targetting health inequality
The perils of place by Stephen Duckett. More

Jobs and growth: Turnbull’s mirage

Malcolm Turnbull is pinning his hopes for the forthcoming election largely on economic imagery. He wants to be seen as ‘a safe pair of hands’ committed to producing more jobs and growth in the Australian economy. But what lies behind the smooth imagery? Effectively just one main policy — to cut the business tax rate. It is a huge gamble which would see the government collecting about $50 billion less revenue over the next 10 years.

Will this policy actually benefit the Australian economy? Frank Stilwell says there are nine reasons to think not. More

​The Wealth of the Nation: New Evatt report

Australia as a whole has become much wealthier since 1970, with the total stock of capital growing about twice as fast as national income during the years since then. But inequality has markedly increased during this same period, and continues to increase. Currently the poorest 40% of Australian households have effectively no wealth at all: about half of them actually have negative net wealth because of their personal debts. At the opposite pole, the wealthiest 10% of Australian households have more than half the nation’s total wealth. The Top 1% of households alone has at least 15 per cent of the nation’s wealth. This affluent elite – the Top 10% and especially the Top 1% – is getting cumulatively richer, not only relative to poor households but also, significantly, in relation to the next 50% of households. Two fault lines are widening – between the bottom 40% and the rest, and between the Top 10% and the 50% in the middle. Dealing with this situation is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our political leaders today.

Read the overview and download the full report

New Evatt report: The Wealth of the Nation

The Wealth of the Nation

The Top 10% now own at least 50 per cent of Australia’s household wealth. More
Read the overview of the new Evatt report by Christopher Sheil and Frank Stilwell. More

News, views & papers

From the Paris climate talks
Lesley Hughes reports back. More

Peace, anti-nukes & Tom Uren
Reflections on the establishment of the Tom Uren Memorial Fund. More

Inequality: beyond all bounds
The top 1% now own more than the rest of us combined. More

President’s Report 2015
Annual report to the AGM. More