For an entertaining and very informative look at the economy, we recommend The New Australian School of Economics (Wonkish) for some Friday night reading. Outside The (Cardboard) Box interviews curbside economist  J. Fishman on the New Australian School of economic theory.

Some excerpts:

(OTCB)   Are you personally aware of any non-Government economists recently ‘bending’, as you describe it, facts?

(Fishman)   Happens all the time. And the lot of them do it to each other on their blogs constantly – just pissing crap back & forth. It’s amazing. But here’s an example from last week. I was watching CNBC beamed-in from the US and their little Chief Economist is on the air, sitting on a stack of phonebooks to bring him up to desk height. He holds a US quarter-dollar and an inflated basketball up to the camera and proceeds to compare the quarter to the US unemployed and the basketball to US employed. Do you know what school of economics that is?

(OTCB)   Austrian?

(Fishman)   That’s the Dumbshit School, is what that is! Crimmeny! The closest thing to the truth in the whole segment was the quarter.

(OTCB)   How’s that?

(Fishman)   Because about a quarter of the US workforce is wantin’ full-time work but unable to find it.

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(OTCB) Let’s move on. The New Australian School proposes the abolishment of unemployment insurance. Tell us about that.

(Fishman) We don’t propose the abolishment of unemployment insurance.

(OTCB) You don’t?

(Fishman) No, we just call it Personal Savings. People need to save for those inevitable times that they have no income. The idea that people work and pay taxes so Government can then pay people who are not working….well THAT is not worth a Zack.

(OTCB) Then how do you address the needs of the unemployed?

(Fishman) We employ ‘em. Crikey! It’s simple…..

(OTCB) You advocate ‘make work’ jobs?

(Fishman) Throw that saying in the dunny. ‘Make work’ implies there’s no actual work so we’re just going to have one bloke dig a hole and another one fill it in. No, what we’re saying is, hire them. There’s always something that needs to be done. Something needs to be cleaned, maintained, repaired…..something. People should work for their pay. Pay could be offered for work in tandem with training too. But these convoluted flim-flams are just bodgy economics.

Read the full interview at Outside the (Cardboard) Box…

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