You might have heard that renewables are the cheapest new electricity generation technology. But is this claim true?

Physicist and businessman Aidan Morrison looked into the assumptions and analysis in the various reports that produce such claims from organisations like the CSIRO and AEMO.

Aidan has published his initial analysis of the “sunk cost assumption” hidden in these reports at Fresh Economic Thinking back in July. He has also released a terrific video explaining how the analysis gets it wrong.

We discuss these problematic issues in much more detail.

Aidan posts as @QuixoticQuant on Twitter.

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Tim Helm is the Research Director of Prosper Australia. We chat about Tim’s intellectual journey into the economics of property and housing, and his views on housing prices and debates about supply. The Auckland analysis referenced in the episode can be found here and here.

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What are the legal and economic issues that arise when trying to enforce a duty of care to future generations?

Cameron and Jonathan discuss the legal and economic questions arising from the Private Senators Bill by David Pocock intending to “legislate a positive duty of care, creating a requirement for politicians and policy makers to consider the impact of climate harm on young people and future generations.”

This comes on the back of a 2022 Federal Court of Australia ruling in the appealed case of Minister for the Environment v Sharma, which found against such a duty.

This case was brought by “eight brave children led by Anj Sharma (with the assistance of 86 year-old litigation guardian Sister Brigid Arthur), against the Federal Minister for the Environment to protect young people from the future harm caused by the climate change impacts of a proposed coal mine extension project in NSW known as the Vickery Extension Project.”

Read about that court case here.

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There has been a lot of news on both the housing policy and COVID policy fronts recently. Cameron and Jonathan share their thoughts on things like the Housing Future Fund, the latest on Australia’s COVID vaccination injury compensation scheme, a new anti-discrimination bill about COVID vaccines, and news out of the United States about hidden influences behind the COVID mandates, and more.

The Lee Fang article on Pfizer’s lobbying and financial influence is here.

The United States Senate report on COVID origins is available here.The Australian bill on vaccine discrimination is here.

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Why does an economist start a website documenting the effect of city upzoning?

Matthew Maltman is an Australian economist who runs the website onefinaleffort.com. In this interview, Cameron talks with Matthew Maltman about the case for experimenting with zoning changes to understand what really happens. Did Auckland fix its housing problems with upzoning? Where are other planning rule changes being tested?

Find Matthew on Twitter at @1finaleffort

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Misha Saul is an investment manager by day, but by night he is also one of the more interesting participants in Australia’s economic, cultural and political debates. He has broad interests in history, culture, war, finance and business, and always gets you thinking. For example, Misha wrote an essay entitled A “New Hong Kong” in Australia? where he mused about building new cities and how we might become more radical and ambitious about what is achievable.

Follow Misha’s terrific Kvetch subtack and find him on Twitter here.

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What exactly is Super? What’s its purpose? How can we do retirement policy better?

This is Part 2 of a special joint episode where Cameron is hosted by Matt from Aussie Firebug to participate in a debate about superannuation with CIO of The Motley Fool Australia, Scott Phillips.

Find Part 1 of this episode here.

Check out Aussie Firebug here.

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What exactly is Super? What’s its purpose?

This is Part 1 of a special joint episode where Cameron is hosted by Matt from Aussie Firebug to participate in a debate about superannuation with CIO of The Motley Fool Australia, Scott Phillips.

* What is the purpose of Super?

* Is there an alternative to the current Super system?

* Thoughts on how we could fix the Super system

* Do we actually need to have both Super and the Age Pension?

Check out Aussie Firebug here

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The Economist magazine recently wrote about the “worrying amount of fraud in medical research” and the former editor of The BMJ medical journal, Richard Smith, asked if it is “Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?”

Too many designated experts in our society are anything but. They get things wrong, and when they do, they impose enormous costs on others.

Is a “f**k up levy” a solution?

Experts would pay a levy so that when they inevitably screw up we can use the money collected to compensate those who bear the costs. This is the idea that kicks off the conversation this week.

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Our first FET podcast guest is Catherine Cashmore, an experienced property professional. Catherine’s insights are unique because not only does she have on-the-ground insights about property investing, she has a deep understanding of the theoretical and policy debates about housing and property that have happened since the days of Henry George in the late 19th century.

As well as dealing with this long history of property debates, we ask Catherine about what buyers often get wrong about property investment, whether there is a financial logic to renting instead of buying, and what might be next for Australia’s property market.

You can find out more about Catherine and her thoughts on property markets and policy at the following places.

* The Land Cycle Investor is a free newsletter including lots of cool interviews!https://landcycleinvestor.fattail.com.au/  

* Cycles, Trends & Forecasts, containing in-depth information concerning the land cycle, how it applies to Australia and how to use the knowledge to create wealth.https://fattail.com.au/subscription/pan/

* Catherine’s personal website is at cashmoreco.com.au

* Prosper Australia is at Prosper.org.au

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