Once again, I see that Sinclair Davidson makes a reference to the Randian term "moochers and looters", and a sweeping and unjustified categorisation of the modern "Left".
Even in America, it didn't do Romney any favours to sound like he was adopting a Randian approach; in Australia, Joe Hockey went Randian-lite with "lifters and leaners", and hasn't it served him a treat?
So it's puzzling in a way that an economics Professor who is a member of a think tank that would like to have some influence on a "liberal" party's policy should so openly display his own tin ear for political terminology that, quite rightly, does not work in Australia. The country has long positioned itself as interested in social fairness and eschewing the extremes of both free market capitalism and socialism; what's more, Randian libertarianism doesn't work here either - Australians like gun control and don't have a fetish about rich business men and women being exemplars of all that is fine and noble.
But seeing I think this is a hopeless Prime Minister of a bad government (something on which the Professor and I might agree on) I should encourage Abbott and his team to ramp up the Randian phraseology. There would be no surer way of helping them lose the next election.
Just remember Steve this doesn't apply for example to people on higher incomes who get a rebate for being in a private health fund.
ReplyDeleteDavidson works for a publicly funded university. By his standards he should go out and get a real job. He is just another hypocrite. He leeches off the public teat so he can promote an economic ideology that is next to useless in the private sphere, where they want economics that deals with the real world and don't keep harking back to dinosaurs like Rand and Hayek.
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