Alex’s blog about strategy, campaigning, growth, politics and climate (among other things).
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The economy no longer cares about you
The average consumer is dead. That was the conclusion of a confidential Citigroup report from 20 years ago for ultra-wealthy clients titled Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances (link, PDF). This 2005 report stripped away the polite fiction that billionaires and the rest of us live in the same economy. The world is actually divided… Read more
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The stress of US misery
The US is a nation of people immiserated by the stress of late-stage neoliberal capitalism. People aren’t just worried about money, or work, or health. They are worried about all of them, all at once, all the time, according to a new report from Murmuration, The Stress That Stays. Why is everyone in the US… Read more
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Do we need wealth taxes?
While most people are struggling to buy food and pay rent, a handful of billionaires have accumulated fortunes so vast they are almost impossible to comprehend. This is because the rules of the economy have been deliberately rewritten to favour wealth over work. Across Australia, the UK, and the USA, the gap between the ultra-wealthy… Read more
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The business of the culture war
Thinking of “culture war” as a mere accident of market incentives hides the deliberate class warfare inherent in neoliberalism. Unfortunately, this appears to be the trap that many commentators who are sharing a new Harvard job market paper, The Business of the Culture War by Aakaash Rao and Shakked Noy have fallen into. The paper… Read more
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What if neoliberalism made everyone angry in 2025
From the queues for unaffordable rentals in Sydney to the shuttered high streets of Northern England and the ICE executions in US suburbs, the chaos and decline of 2025 was the inevitable result of a global economic system that has stopped producing things and started devouring itself. Local and national tragedies are weaponised and co-opted… Read more
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What if we broke up Australia’s monopolies?
Australia has the most concentrated industries and markets, with the least competition of any developed country. This worsens inequality and hands exorbitant power to corporate executives and billionaires. Despite this — actually, because of this — Australia doesn’t have laws that allow the Commonwealth government to break up monopolies. Monopolies are undemocratic because they transform… Read more
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How billionaires escape taxes
Billionaires inhabit a completely different world and moral universe to the rest of us, and how they escape paying taxes through debt is the perfect illustration of why we need a wealth tax. While everyday people operate in a system where work is taxed, billionaires operate in a system where wealth and capital is liberated.… Read more
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Time to get fit
If you search for “fitness” or “self-improvement” on YouTube today, you will likely find two things. The first is generic advice on protein intake. The second is a pipeline to the far-right. For too long, the Left has ceded the territory of physical fitness, discipline, and self-improvement to the Right. We have allowed far-right reactionaries… Read more
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What if inequality creates right-wing extremism?
Across the world, there is a resurgence of right-wing extremism. At the same time, global inequality and wealth concentration is at the worst levels in centuries. The modern worker does not own their existence; they rent it. In Sydney, Singapore or London, a teacher or nurse now spends more than 40 percent of their monthly… Read more
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Pathology of late-stage financialisation
The AFR has reported on the defence mounted by Equity Trustees in the Federal Court regarding the collapse of the Shield Master Fund, and it serves as a case study in the pathology of late-stage financialisation. The Equity Trustees confess that their “fiduciary” function is rent-extraction. Their complaint is the regulatory state didn’t act as… Read more
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No future: Empowering youth or managing dissent?
The global ruling classes are terrified of you. That is the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from reading the reports from global consultancies like PwC and the Tony Blair Institute about the political revolts led by young people across the world. These kinds of reports purport to be about “empowering” the youth but are… Read more
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What if the banks make housing less affordable?
Financialisation is worsening the housing crisis, and to understand why and how, we must abandon the myth that banks merely lend out the savings of other customers First, you need to forget how you probably think banks work. Most of us are taught at school, university and through the media that banks take in savings… Read more
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The moral victimhood of the rent-seeking class
The opinion piece by wealth manager CEO Will Hamilton in The Australian is a masterclass in the ideological projection of victimhood by the rent-seeking class. Titled with the breathless assertion that a levy on Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSFs) is “immoral,” the article performs a classic manoeuvre of the neoliberal era: disguising the protection of private… Read more
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What I’m reading (December 2025)
Stories and links that are of interest or relevance to leaders, strategists, campaigners and organisers. Inequality and the economy Global affairs Unions Workers’ rights Data, tech and privacy AI and the future of work Campaigning, communications and social media Society, media, news and culture Climate Change Read more
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What if higher land taxes lowered housing costs?
What if higher, expanded land taxes helped to lower the costs of housing? Developers and property lobbyists argue that increasing land taxes will drive up housing costs. This is a self-serving myth. The reality is that broad-based land tax acts as a powerful lever to unlock supply and stop land banking/land hoarding. Developers keep housing… Read more
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The billionaire enclosure
Democracy is being fenced off by billionaires and the system where all citizens can have a say in the decisions of our society is at risk. Just as the English gentry in the 1800s fenced off common lands to force peasants into wage labour and created the modern company structure to enclose their wealth in… Read more
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What if we abolished limited liability companies?
We are taught that corporations, limited liability companies, are the natural legal innovation, created by the heroism of the free market. This is a lie. They are not a “neutral” tool of trade or commerce. They are a weapon of wealth extraction designed to shield the rich from the consequences of their actions. Limited liability… Read more
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The “pre-poor” wealth gap
In Australia the top 20 percent of households control nearly two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 20 percent hold a statistically insignificant 1 percent. The “comfortable Australian middle class” is a statistical ghost; most are merely “pre-poor”, clinging to a mortgage while the wealthy pull away. Australia is rapidly turning into a plutonomy,… Read more
