Author: Jacob Debets

New Economy Journal Managing Editor
Jacob is a lawyer and writer from Melbourne. He holds a Juris Doctor from Melbourne Law school and a BA in Criminology from the University of Melbourne. He writes about a wide and constantly expanding range of topics, including the commoditisation of Australia’s higher education system and labour issues in combat sports.

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James Mumford’s ‘Vexed’, Reviewed

If you had to pick a defining characteristic of the year 2020, you could do worse than nominate polarisation – the division of people into two sharply contrasting groups or sets of opinions/beliefs. Everywhere across the Western World, deep splits are entrenching on fundamental issues of public interest: from climate change and clean energy, to racial equality and public policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, to immigration and borders. Derision and distrust are the modus operandi of those seeking to engage across political lines, and common ground is becoming harder and harder to find. Read More …

Discussion of post-COVID-19 world

Scott Colvin: Who could have predicted, even two months ago, that a global pandemic would capture so much of the world, robbing us of employment, the performance arts and any form of normal socialising. The fragility of our financial situation has been exposed and untold Read More …

Demand the Future: COVID-19 and the Economics of Opportunity

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Martin Luther King Read More …

A Thank You from the Editors

  And with that, the first year of the New Economy Journal is in the books. We’ve published eight issues and 86 individual pieces, managed to put together a print edition for NENA’s annual conference in Perth and built a strong foundation from which to Read More …

Economics of Arrival Book Review

Book Review: ‘The Economics of Arrival’

How is this New Economy? Economists are beginning to lay out some of the disparate strands of evidence to present a vision of a transformative economy. Jacob Debets writes the first NEJ Book Review on The Economics of Arrival, by renowned new economy writers and Read More …

What Could Have Been

The Labor Party has lost the unlosable election, and with it, the chance to change Australia’s course towards something approaching social democracy. The result defies every poll, pundit and focus group. The Coalition’s policy offering was astonishing in its vacuousness and cruelty, led by a Read More …

School Strike for Climate

School Strikes for Climate: At the Coal Face

A funny thing is happening in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election: young people, a traditionally apathetic mix of first-time voters and too-young-to-be-voters, are disrupting the conventional narrative. The youth enrolment rate is at an all-time high of 88.8%, and evidence shows that in contrast to earlier generations, millennials are not becoming more conservative as they age. Technologies often derided as encouraging narcissism and other antisocial behaviour are instead being used for political activism. Young people are demanding a seat the table on a diverse set of issues: house prices, marriage equality, insecure work and pill testing among them, and reactionary calls for the young to stay in their lane are simply adding fuel to the fire. Read More …