Not mention, as a manager with 30+ years in my industry I had the chance to hire several new and recent graduates in the past year and they were extraordinarily good. People with tremendous potential who've come out of their studies really well equipped.

A friend visited unannounced today because I hadn't respond to request for proof of life messages. Messages feed anxiety when I'm low, I expect bad news, I hate checking email, etc. I'm not really doing well but today felt like a step in the right direction.

Now to put my brave face back on.

An unexpected bonus in my YouTube suggestions: between looking for songs to learn and play, along with and some videos from favourite guitar players, my suggestions are suddenly so much better for my mental health.

I brute forced myself into playing today, got out guitars etc from hiding spots in wardrobes, needed a ladder. I decided to try and figure out vocal lines and play along with some songs, (inspired by Roy Ziv who plays shred based on pop tunes and it's awesome). Substantially better than expected.

I'm sceptical because I don't believe our politicians believe in social and economic progress.

Still, improving environmental law, and restoring the environment, is critical for real social and economic progress.

Next, resolve poverty which also holds back social and economic progress.

If you want security, make the nation secure, fix the problems of the least secure, don't create deeper privilege for the already privileged, don't trample on the vulnerable.

You fix a sinking ship by plugging the holes, not by building a taller mast and fighting over who gets to cling to the top.

And our politicians are seduced by the same fantasy, so they also prioritise getting something for nothing (undermining tax laws, underfunding tax collection, secrecy, blaming bad governance on immigration, etc) rather than prioritising wellbeing and making our nations better to live in for all.

But closing tax loopholes is probably a higher impact way to improve tax revenue. When some of our biggest corporations pay little to no tax, moving the tax rate isn't fixing the problem.

Anyone making a simple blunt argument that a couple of percentage points increase in the maximum tax bracket or corporate tax rates is going to cause sudden revenue decimating flight of the wealthy and their vast tax contributions, because Laffer curve, anyone saying that is not motivated by facts.

Here's some more recent and academic research, (Melbourne Uni using Spanish tax data), with the conclusion that to the extent it's a meaningful concept, the Laffer curve extremely elastic and dependent on many factors.

This blog post shares an example of how people can draw graphs to say whatever they want. It's criticising a childishly motivated diagram in the Wall Street Journal, and makes the critical point that we need to consider what business and the wealthy actually pay, not just the tax regime thresholds.

Plus a day of seeing the country rolling by. Time to read and be still. When I lived in Europe I frequently took long train trips. Sadly the intercity XPT trains in Australia are less comfortable, (but more comfortable than flying, excluding the extra time on the train).

My heart's with the train.