Welcome to MMT works

Today (January 22, 2026), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest labour force data – Labour Force, Australia – for December 2025 – which showed a relatively strong increase in employment and the rising participation rate – both good signs. Taken together the demand-side of the labour market outstripped the growth in the…

My friend Alan Kohler, who is the finance presenter at the ABC, wrote an interesting article today about AI (January 19, 2026) – AI platforms like Grok are an ethical, social and economic nightmare — and we’re starting to wake up – in which he argued that while he thought climate change was “humanity’s biggest…

Today’s blog post is a little different to my usual posts because I am writing it as a writer rather than as an economist. I write tens of thousands of words every year and have done so for many years. People have asked me whether I enjoy spending my time in that way, given that…

I have closely followed the progress of India’s – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) – since its inception on September 7, 2005. The scheme has been a major success in reducing rural poverty and providing income security to poor rural communities in India. It has also reduced the so-called ‘desperation migration’ from…

I grew up in a society where collective will was at the forefront and it is true to say people looked out for each other. The state – at all levels – had various policy structures in place to provide levels of economic protection for the least advantaged members of society. Having grown up in…