Big Facts With Van Badham

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How Is Unemployment Deliberate?

We’re often told that unemployment is the result of laziness – that ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘leaners’ are holding our nation back.

But what really drives unemployment? And what can be done about it?

In our latest edition of Big Facts, author and Guardian columnist Van Badham unpacks the question, and examines what the current crisis can tell us about the spectre of unemployment.

Sources & Credits:

How Is Unemployment Deliberate?  Video by Van Badham and David Molloy, 2020 

Further Reading: 

Capital: A critique of political economy (Volume 1 – chapter 25) by Karl Marx 

  •  Effects of unemployment on mental and physical health by M W Linn, R Sandifer, and  S Stein 

    The Privatisation Lemon

    Politicians spent the 1980s telling us privatising everything from electricity to trains would be good for us.

    So why – and how – did privatisation turn out to be A MASSIVE LEMON?

    Time for a Vansplanation on privatisation…

    Sources & Credits

    Recommended Reading

    Videos

    Images

    Music/Sound

    What is Disaster Capitalism?

    Coronavirus is a dangerous time for the economy – and nothing makes this clearer than having a Treasurer come out as a Margaret Thatcher fanboy.

    Van takes us back to the 1980s to unravel the source of today’s economic inequality, stripped services and dislocation.

    Sources & Credits

    “What is Disaster Capitalism?” Video by Van Badham and David Molloy, 2020 

    Further Reading: 

    Van Badham, “Australia doesn’t need Thatcher and Reagan’s neoliberal economics of misery” (Guardian, Monday 27 July, 2020)

    Frank Bongiorno, The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015)

    Milton Friedman, Free To Choose (1980)

     Chris Harman, A People’s History of the World (2017 ed.)

    Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

    Peter Kornbluh, Still Hidden: A Full Record Of What the U.S. Did in Chile (Washington Post, Sunday 24 October, 1999)

    Videos: 

    Music: 

    Stimulus! Stimulus! Stimulus!

    Politicians keep saying it – but what does it mean for the rest of us?

    Do we really need one, just because coronavirus has, you know, devastated the economy? Here’s a “vansplaination” about what recovery SHOULD mean for jobs & households. #auspol

    Sources & Credits

    “Are You Stimulated Yet?” Video by Van Badham and David Molloy, 2020 

    Further Reading: 

    The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes (1936)

    Introducing Keynes: A Graphic Guide, by Peter Pugh and Chris Garratt (2009)

    Governomics, Ian McAuley and Miriam Lyons (2015)

    Economics for Everyone, Jim Stanford (2008)

    Full Employment in Australia (H.C. Coombs appendix) (1945)

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    Big Facts With Van Badham - ATUI Blog

    Resource Tags:

    CapitalismCapitalism - DisasterEconomicsEmploymentPrivatisationUnemployment

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