Ross Gittins today in the SMH, regarding the bewilderment of the Howard government’s economic-rationalism ideologues as to why we sheeple aren’t more happy about the wonderful economy: It’s not only the economy, stupid
Gittins points out that growth in real incomes is not enough to satisfy when people no longer compare their circumstances only with themselves 10 years ago but also with the people around them, and all can see that the disparity in wealth between the social classes is growing. The evidence in the electoral polls shows that a growing proportion of voters prefer predictable job security to a booming share price, and are made more anxious that their children will be able to afford home-ownership than grateful over their own capital gains in the skyrocketing property market.
Economic-rationalism has never sufficiently factored in people’s attachment to intangible goods. Gittins’ final line nails it:
Another explanation for our base ingratitude, of course, could be our dawning realisation that there’s more to life than economics. No, that couldn’t possibly be right.
Filed under: Sociology, economics, elections
In response to Dr Mohammed Haneef’s interview last night on 60 minutes:
Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?
He was only inconvenienced for 4 weeks.
Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s all been corrected now.
Sure he was incarcerated, but he was fed and safe and he must have known that if he was innocent he’d eventually be set free.
He shouldn’t have been traumatised by that, he should be happy to be contributing to the safety of society by being thoroughly investigated.
The attempts by partisans to game talkback shows are becoming more and more obvious.
The last two lpoints strike me as particularly disingenuous. They’re trying to imply that only a person with some guilty secrets would be traumatised by being investigated. As if anybody who’s been paying attention to justice narratives (both fact and fiction) at any time in their life ever doesn’t know that innocent people get persecuted all the time for cynical political gain. Why on earth should Haneef’s pofessed innocence have made him unafraid of the investigation’s intensity?
Filed under: authoritarianism, elections, law, sheer incompetence
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about just what online strategies could be most effective for political parties in getting their message across to the voters. I’ve run across a lot of interesting views, and thought on them (in between reading chapters of HP7) so here’s a summary of major points.
Disclaimer: I’m not a member of any political party, but I do want the Liberal-National coalition to lose government, or at least lose control of the Senate.
Political parties in Australia don’t have to “get out the base” i.e. motivate them to turn up at the polling booth. The voters already have to turn up or face a fine – so the message isn’t about making them want to get out the door, it has to be tailored to where they’re actually going to put their mark, and tempt them into being an active supporter who volunteers time and money. Thus the recent efforts from pollies of all stripes to suddenly get themselves pages on the social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube, some more impressively than others.
So how do the high-profile parties in Australia (i.e. the parties who already have successfully elected federal parliamentarians) stack up in attracting the attention of the casual political websurfer, and how do they rate in funnelling them towards a firmer voting intention and maybe a donation of time and/or money?
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Filed under: elections, netgeek, technology
