This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Matter Over Mind - Paul Krugman, NYT: "[…] belief that income inequality is all about, and can be fixed by, education is even more wrong than you thought."
• Stop subsidising for-profit education - John Quiggin
• Ed-Tech's Inequalities - Audrey Watters: "Education technology will close the achievement gap; education technology will close the opportunity gap. Education technology will revolutionize; education technology will democratize. Or so we are told."
• 6 Things Warwick University’s New Temp Agency Tells Us About Academic Precarity - John Murray on Novara Wire
• Ezra Klein of Vox.com vs. Tom Standage of The Economist - Brad DeLong, Washington Center for Equitable Growth: Aggregation with attribution vs. authority silo.
• The shadowy world of IPA finances - Clive Hamilton on the Drum: "The IPA is notoriously secretive about its sources of funding. Its senior staff have refused to answer journalists' questions, although over the years enough information has leaked out to suggest that much of its funding has come from the oil and mining industries, including Exxon, Shell, Caltex and BHP-Billiton."
• Malice in Wonderland - Desmond Manderson, Arena: "Abbott’s ‘felicific calculus’ is that more people are made happier by ‘stopping the boats’, even if some people—those stuck on Manus or Nauru, for example—are made very unhappy indeed. Let me repeat: our government is prepared to turn a blind eye to, or to condone, perhaps even intentionally devise, actions that amount to torture, so long as it helps it realize its goals. Has there ever been a case like it in Australian history? The violation of human rights is not an accident; it’s a policy. Net happiness has increased, so we have nothing to apologise for."
• The hottest tax idea in Washington is actually terrible - Marshall I. Steinbaum, the Week: Consumption tax. This time, it won't just be an outrageous gift to the rich. Honest.
• Servitude: the way we work now - Geoffrey Heptonstall at OurKingdom: "People who in law are free are bound by economic necessity to work for less than the living wage (‘apprenticeships’), no pay (‘internships’), or in uncertain conditions (‘zero-hours’ contracts). They are free to leave if they wish. Like Okies in the Dust Bowl they can load up the truck. They at least had Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. Who speaks for the zero people?"