liamliam.bsky.social

Raising the tax free threshold is a reasonable policy ask but it is definitionally not redistributive. And to fund such a tax cut through increased taxes on a resource we need to urgently phase out is a budget timebomb. Progressives need to get comfortable fast with raising income taxes.

So instead of taxing gas and tying up its future revenue in long term contracted expenditure for electrification (to protect it from future governments) - he wants to give tax cuts to every man and his dog including Gina, and making the budget permanently addicted to fossil fuel renevue. Snake oil

Does anyone have a full list of what a gas tax could pay for? We've got dental in Medicare, universal childcare, free public transport, home batteries, public housing, freight electrification, and now a tax cut. Am I missing anything?

The view on Bluesky is generally that a company that makes profits is bad because profits mean you’re evil and a company that doesn’t make profits is bad because that means you’re a fraud.

New “he just… he tweeted it out”

“What do you want to say that you think you can’t?” answered again, in the traditional way.

It's a choice (a bad one) to tell readers this driver "passed too close to cyclists" when there's video evidence showing he drove his car into them, made contact and hurt someone. Fellow journalists: we can explore the nuances of punishment for drivers without obfuscating their dangerous behavior.

I especially love this diagram.

This is a quietly metastasizing moral panic

If you're not familiar with the alcohol consumption by decile chart, it's a real eye opening look at what being a hardcore alcoholic is like

I think it’s even worse than this. This often means, “after I deduct expenditures *and savings* from my cash flow, my cash flow is net zero.”

The PAVN used to do leaflets about this sort of thing for African-American GIs.

Just unquestionably true and not just for political media.

These stories are shitting me. Card fees are just a business cost. You add up all your business costs, fixed and variable. You decide on a fair profit margin and set your prices accordingly. The customer pays the price on the price list. 1/2

"The paperwork" can be silly at times but is often "vital work." If you hear "we won't cut the frontline staff though" be afraid. It means stuff like "an RN will now spend most of her shift trying to get a lightbulb replaced and a medical gas tap fixed so the bed is open."

Now THIS is how you write a story. Devastating.

There are people with very interesting things to say about the "is Zionism racist" question that deserve careful consideration. Representatives of a government that is both Zionist and racist, as well as genocidal, are not those people.

Why is reducing ideological bias a goal? To what end? Politics is almost always a fight over values, not facts. I don’t care if I am “biased” towards social justice, whatever that means.

Yglesias has lost his mind. This is not "progressive economic thinking," this is what you see on Twitter. substack.com/@matthewygle...

Screenshot from Fed Governor Waller’s speech: www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s... Some interesting points on AI, too.

"I am taking part in the sporting boycott of Israel… I am doing this because Israel is committing genocide in Gaza." Australian women's chess champion Heather Richards' boycott is reported overseas. But apart from indies like @index.lamestream.com.au.ap.brid.gy , gets little attention at home.

You can have your theory about why this is happening, but if your theory starts "Well, the economy is just worse than 2008," you are not a serious person.

There is obviously something going on here beyond "The economy is actually that bad and people are reacting to it." Use your brains. It is not worse than 2008, when the global economy almost literally collapsed. It is not worse than 2020, when 40 million people lost their jobs.

We would currently have a lot more art deco flats in Woollahra Council if not for 100 years of tradition of upholding bans explicitly initiated to keep the poors out. The street in Rose Bay mentioned at the end recently got declared a mid-rise zone by Minns under the LMR. 🎉

Israel moves to bar both main Arab lists from October election https://aje.news/wilvsu

it is just fundamentally not the case that Zohran's governance has been characterized by either a) large new spending programs b) an insouciant approach to deficits he is instead plotting a new course for left politics which takes efficiency and budgeting deadly seriously

"private jets account for 16% of the [US] Federal Aviation Administration’s operations but contribute just 0.6% of the taxes that fund it"

I just honestly can't get over that Save Women Sports, an anti-trans group could only find five trans athletes competing K through 12. Five. The NCAA president testified a year and a half ago or so that there were less than 10 college level trans athletes. What the fuck are we doing, people

Just some "concerned Christian businessmen" giving neo-Nazis wads of cash to harass the PM. www.theage.com.au/national/tai...

I've had these conversations in my community and, at a certain point you realise you can point out all the ways in which Hanson is lying and using racism as a cover, that they'll be worse off, etc., and then they say something that boils down to "well, she might be a liar but at least she's racist."

Our everyday language and habits and ideas of what's normal incorporate all kinds of political ideas that reinforce the existing structures of domination. That's what ideology is. An important part of the work of politically-engaged intellectuals is to help us become conscious of this.

AI still having no impact upon Australian labour productivity, which was unchanged in the June quarter and hasn't meaningfully increased in years #ausbiz #auspol

One Nation (July): Hey let's joke about rounding up political opponents and moving them somewhere else! Sook Nation (August): People saying we're dangerous are using rhetoric that is inciting violence against us!

again: they mean it

here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.