Robert Carling: The economic tragedy of COVID-19

The Covid-19 virus (CV-19) is first and foremost a health crisis. But it is fast becoming an economic crisis as well. Some observers are asking whether the economic damage will be greater than the health damage. One commentator observed that “we are deliberately destroying our economy to slow the spread.” 

When the health damage could involve a large scale death toll, many people will rush to the judgement that any economic cost is a price worth paying — even if they think about it at all. That seems to be the consensus so far — but it may not stay that way as the potential enormity of the cost becomes more visible by the day and people accustomed to freedom bridle at draconian restrictions tying them to their homes and shutting down their businesses.

Robert Carling: An economic rationalist's guide to the Australian election

Just as the truth is the first casualty of war, principled policy is the first casualty of election campaigns. Even in Australia's era of 'economic rationalism' that ended a long time ago, the economic dries took a back seat role during election campaigns (the Hewson-led Liberal campaign of 1993 being the exception). In the 2013 campaign, however, the dries are not just in the back seat but locked away in the boot, and it is not at all clear that they will be allowed out after the election regardless of who wins.

Economic rationalism cannot be tightly defined, but broadly speaking it is a set of beliefs in free markets and the price mechanism; a minimum of regulation; openness to trade and investment; raising government revenue through broad-based and neutral taxation; subjecting public investment proposals to rigorous cost-benefit analysis; and wrapping all of this in fiscal discipline.