This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Joe Hockey Blows Thought Bubbles On Housing Bubbles - the indispensible Ben Eltham at New Matilda: "The reason Australia has such a major housing affordability crisis is relatively simple. Our houses cost too much. A property bubble, driven by investors seeking capital returns, has inflated the price of Australian capital city housing well above its true value."
• The U.S. job skills mismatch and up-skilling - Nick Bunker, Washington Center for Equitable Growth: "New research […] looks at what happened to employer requirements for positions during the Great Recession and the resulting recovery. What they find is that an increasing supply of unemployed workers leads to an increase in the requirements for jobs that employers posted. With a larger pool of talent to pick from, employers get to pick the cream of the crop."
• Applauding Themselves to Death - George Monbiot: "While almost all governments claim to support the aim of preventing more than 2°C of global warming, they also seek to “maximise economic recovery” of their fossil fuel reserves. (Then they cross their fingers, walk three times widdershins around the office and pray that no one burns it)."
• The Death of Blogs has been Greatly Exaggerated - Mark Thoma guest post at the Fiscal Times: "The reporting today on economic issues is so much better than it was […], and that is due in no small part to the interaction between reporters, the public, and academics willing to blog and put complicated, technical matters into terms that the general public can understand."
• Roosevelt’s money policy, 1933-1934 - Eric Rauchway, Crooked Timber: "He wanted to establish an international system of managed currencies, with an agreement that would allow them to remain stable for long periods, but adjustable in case of need – that was what he told the World Economic Conference at the end of summer 1933, and that was why it broke up – because other countries weren’t yet ready to join the US."
• Economists! Be more Marxist - Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling
• Don’t be surprised by Abbott’s comments about ‘lifestyle choices’ - Sydney's Christopher Mayes and Jenny Kaldor at the Conversation: "Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim this week that people living in remote communities were making a “lifestyle choice” that taxpayers shouldn’t be obliged to fund was not just the result of an unguarded moment. Rather, the phrase reveals an underlying view that social circumstances are the responsibility of individuals, rather than societies."
• Australian firm to assume Indiana Toll Road lease, pay $5.73 billion - South Bend Tribune: Rent seeking is now a major export earner! AU FTW!
• NSW can pay for the infrastructure it needs without privatisation - Frank Stillwell at the Conversation: "[T]here are viable alternatives. Indeed, in economic matters, there are always alternatives."
• Political philosophy now illegal in the UK - Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber: "Well, almost. The British government has just produced the guidance for its “Prevent” scheme for education, which aims to stop young people from being drawn into “extremism”."
• Blyth Devastates Congress' Approach to Budget - The Real News Network: Blyth absolutely nails it, in record time.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Benign and powerful: the contradictory language of metadata retention - Adam Henschke in the Conversation: 'More than mere inconsistency, these “rhetorical contradictions” are used to convince us that we needn’t worry about retention and use of metadata, but at the same time is absolutely necessary for our individual and national security.'
• The Right Thing to Do: Homeless edition - Ian Welsh: "Utah’s Housing First program cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, about half of the $20,000 it cost to treat and care for homeless people on the street."
• Profits up, investment down: why it matters for low pay - James Meadway, New Economics Foundation Blog: "[UK] Wages have fallen since the crash in 2007. Profits (net surplus outside of the North Sea) have gone through the roof. If it’s not quite a zero-sum game, it starts to look very close to one. The recovery has been driven by consumer spending. With real wages falling, this has come from a rise in borrowing by households." Yay for the credit card welfare system! Also: Almost 80% of UK Self-Employed Workers Living in Poverty - Catherine Phillips, Newsweek. Having been in that situation, I can easily believe it.
• Talking Trash: High-Status Explanations for Watching Low-Brow TV - The Reading List, The Society Pages
• A negative interest rate world? Why? - Ian Welsh: "In the United States more than all the gains of the last “recovery” have gone to the top 10% (really the top 3% or so.)  There has limited broad based demand for new goods.  Luxury goods, investment art, and London and Manhattan real-estate do not scale.  Without widespread demand, opportunities for new businesses, with new employers, are limited."
• New Zealand Spies on Neighbors in Secret “Five Eyes” Global Surveillance - Ryan Gallagher at the Intercept: "Everything we do is explicitly authorized and subject to independent oversight." Oh. That's all right then.
• How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality - Timothy Taylor: "The effects of these patterns on inequality of incomes in the United States are clearcut: higher income families are better able to provide financial and other kinds of support for their children, both as they grow up, and when it comes time to attend college, and when it comes time to find a job after college. In this way, higher education has become a central part part of the process by which high-income families can seek to assure that their children are more likely to have high incomes, too."