McCusker Institute on ‘Shared Prosperity

Greetings from the McCusker Institute at the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr Katherine Trebeck, Economic Change Program Director at The Next Economy, is speaking on ‘Shared Prosperity: the economy we have, the one we need and what we can do to make it better’. This is at a university, so there are slides with references. But the message about the distribution of wealth. At the same time business leaders are talking to government, a few I'm away l. 

Katherine brought the issue by pointing to University of Technology Sydney referring staff being made redundant to stress relief advice. 

The solutions to some intractable problems seem so simple. We can reverse global warming with a carbon tax. Poverty can be eliminated by removing tax breaks for the rich to fund welfare. The solutions are easy but how do we incentivise to do this? 

As a retirement age person who owns the home I live in, with imputed shares and a tax free super balance, I feel guilty. I understand previous governments bribed older voters, but this has reached absurdly generous levels. Couldn't we add "average" to the tax breaks? So the average home, share dividends and super balance would get tax breaks. 

Katherine is presenting examples of companies with a social conscious. However, are these companies funding lobbyists to go to government and demand to pay more tax. 

I suggest universities can help. However, they need to also address their internal inequalities. A meritocracy doesn't have to be winner-takes-all. Only one of Australia's universities is a foreign owned for-profit company. The rest don't need to be run like a caraciture of 19th century capitalism. There are other models which combine academic traditions and social enterprise enterpurship. 

I am a member of my professional body, which employs people to get our views in front of policymakers. Many groups can't afford this, but perhaps students of politics, business and related disciplines could do this for their work experience.