Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Harvey

@harveyfischer99.bsky.social

90 followers 160 following 25 posts

Interested in public finance and inequality. Also dabble a bit on housing, energy, infra and ag. Views not those of my employer etc.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Reposted by Harvey

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 27d

For decades Aus has cut marginal tax rates, largely on high earners, based on exaggerated claims about work disincentives.

Meanwhile, over the same period, we've set up *genuinely* punitive (at times > 100%) effective marginal tax rates on low-middle income earners.

www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

The Australians getting hit with up to 122 per cent tax

Some Australians who are eager to take on more work are being held back by the prospect of giving up most of their additional income – and in some cases, even paying to work.

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Aug 12

reminds me of that quadratic someone used to project covid cases. incredible

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Aug 12

link: crawford.anu.edu.au/content-cent...

Measuring the changing size of intergenerational transfers in the Australian tax and transfer system | Crawford School of Public Policy

P Varela, R Breunig, M Smith, May 2025, TTPI Working Paper 7/2025

crawford.anu.edu.au

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Aug 12

It also complements this finding from Grattan that households pay different rates of tax on the same income based on age (for the same reasons)

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Aug 12

This result is per-person and thus not driven by ageing—the generosity of the tax and transfer system really has tilted towards older people over time—but the ageing trend will amplify its budgetary implications

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Aug 12

What happens when you combine growth in spending on older Australians (pensions, health, aged care) with significant growth in their concessionally taxed super + housing?

A big shift in relative generosity of net transfers and final incomes for different age cohorts

Interesting paper

Reposted by Harvey

Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · Apr 11

people on the other site are doing "is living in denmark better than living in the us" discourse based on that one paper about wealth and mortality and all reasonable interpretations aside, if your metric of wellbeing says that living in mississippi is better than denmark then it's a stupid metric

Reposted by Harvey

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · Mar 27

treating data as a plural is almost as quaint and kooky as ‘fora’ and ‘stadia’

Reposted by Harvey

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · Mar 26

fun quirk of the discourse:

giving $x to everyone *except the poorest* via the tax system is called "targeted" and "progressive"

giving $x to everyone *including the poorest* via the payments system is called "untargeted", "regressive" and "middle class welfare"

Reposted by Harvey

Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · Mar 6

Germany’s ‘whatever-it-takes’ spending push to end years of stagnation - on.ft.com/3R7j4fX

Can't help wondering if doing this a few years ago might have been clever

Germany’s ‘whatever-it-takes’ spending push to end years of stagnation

Europe’s largest economy could return to pre-pandemic growth trend

Reposted by Harvey

Peter Whiteford @peterwhiteford.bsky.social · Mar 5

But my "favourite" chart is this one - incomes boomed across the distribution in the years leading up to the Financial Crisis and inequality rose to a higher level. But between 2013 and 2019 income growth has been at historically low levels.

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Feb 15

t.co/5g2cPNbnKI

https://www.ssb.no/en/sosiale-forhold-og-kriminalitet/trygd-og-stonad/artikler/alternatives-to-paying-child-benefit-to-the-rich-means-testing-or-higher-tax/_/attachment/inline/9d898355-df32-450a-810f-...

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Feb 15

When you finance redistribution through a phase-out, you concentrate the burden of taxation on middle income families with children

A tax-financed universal system allows you to reduce the burdens associated with taxation by spreading it out vertically *and* horizontally!

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Feb 15

I really like this 2021 paper from Norway showing the elegance of universal child benefits compared to kludgy income-tested ones

Clear wins for achieving horizontal equity, boosting labour supply, smoothing consumption, reducing exclusion errors

Reposted by Harvey

Michael Thrower Chowdhury @bevansadvocate.bsky.social · Feb 12

The Accepted Manuscript version of my review of Spies-Butcher's new work 'Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation' is now on my blog if anyone's interested the complex process of liberalisation reforms.

www.bevansadvocate.com/p/politics-i...

Reposted by Harvey

The Conversation AUNZ @aunz.theconversation.com · Jan 29

Two new studies show a briny, carbon-rich environment on the parent body of the Bennu asteroid was suitable for assembling the building blocks of life.

New analysis of asteroid dust reveals evidence of salty water in the early Solar System

theconversation.com

Reposted by Harvey

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Jan 9

"This tax-and-transfer insurance effect—or the role of the state in reducing adult disadvantages that stem from childhood poverty—matters more than other oft-studied characteristics, such as parental education or marital status, in shaping the U.S. disadvantage compared with peer nations."

Zach Parolin @zparolin.bsky.social · Jan 8

Child poverty in the U.S. is four times as likely to lead to adult poverty than in Denmark and Germany, and twice as likely than in the UK and Australia. Why? I write about our findings on "the intergenerational persistence of poverty" today in The Atlantic:
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Why Poor American Kids Are So Likely to Become Poor Adults

Most scholarship on the subject focuses on conditions during childhood. But government support during adulthood plays the biggest role.

www.theatlantic.com

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Jan 3

2024 tax expenditure statement showing super concessions estimated to reach an eye-watering $55 billion in 2024-25, billions higher than the previous estimate

Even bigger difference for the forwards too - $63 billion by 2026-27!

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Jan 1

Seems highly contradictory that (a) huge tax concessions for super are often justified on compensatory grounds because being forced to save is welfare detracting and (b) a frequent justification of forced savings is that it's welfare enhancing

Am I missing something?

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Dec 29

WA GST situation is crazy

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Dec 15

Limitations of markets due to public goods and market failures are well-known, but I really like this framing by Amartya Sen that many of the most significant things in life are not suitable for marketisation

Reposted by Harvey

Robin Wigglesworth @robinwigglesworth.ft.com · Dec 11

Happy 400th birthday to the world's old living bond! 🎂🎉🎊

www.ft.com/content/5122...

Happy 400th birthday to the world’s oldest bond

Reposted by Harvey

Jason Murphy @jasemurphy.bsky.social · Dec 4

A thread of mystifying and hilarious data visualisations from the "Australians" books, published in 1987 by the Australian Government. (originally brought to my attention by @mikejbeggs.bsky.social )
#ausecon #chartcrimes #dataviz
1. Spikes

it's meant to be a graph but it looks like an AI tried to make an origami concertina

Harvey @harveyfischer99.bsky.social · Dec 5

A few months ago I came across this 3 dimensional cylindrical bar column chart in a howard era tax paper 😬

Reposted by Harvey

Zac Gross @zacgross.bsky.social · Dec 2

There have been two economic charts going semi-viral— or at least what counts as viral for ABS statistics—in the past couple of weeks.

Both claim to show a dramatic fall in living standards in Victoria and Australia. Both are wrong.

gross.substack.com/p/mean-charts

On Wednesdays we calculate the median wage statistics

gross.substack.com