Book Review: Battlers and Billionaires by Dr Andrew Leigh

Is there a strain on the Australian social fabric? Battlers and Billionaires looks at the historical trends in inequality in Australia to find out.

I usually wouldn't make a post for just a single book, but it's getting close to the end of the year and I'm not sure if I'll finish another between now and then. That, and I've still got some catching up to do on my blog posts - so yay for extra content.

As much as I love my Kindle, sometimes you want to read a real bookbook. So I went down to my local library over the weekend, procured a library card and borrowed Battlers and Billionaires. As an aside, libraries are seriously underrated - I will have to write about this at a later date. Anyway, I had a bit of extra time to read this week because I was travelling for work, so I was able to knock this one over pretty quickly.

Image credit: Amazon, you can buy it there for Kindle or on Paperback.

I've got a fair bit of respect for Andrew Leigh. He's one of only a handful of federal MPs that I can think of who has a PhD, and I think he's one of the only ones that doesn't distance themselves from it for fear that being seen as an academic will somehow make him less relatable to ordinary folk. In fact, probably because he is an academic, you get the sense that he values data and evidence, and can be objective; other MPs might talk about 'evidence-based policy', but - for me at least - he walks the walk. It also helps that he has a passion for the dismal science - economics - so that gets points in my book.

Battlers and Billionaires, as the subtitle neatly describes, is the story of inequality in Australia; firstly looking at inequality over time through the lenses of income, wealth and consumption, then examining its drivers, effects and possible solutions. And it does this in a relatable, conversational tone which makes it easily readable, and easy to grasp his arguments. Note that Leigh doesn't argue that we should pursue perfect equality, or that we should attempt to recreate the 1970s-1980s. His main point is that inequality is an issue worth discussing and addressing, and that we could apply lessons learnt from this period to today.

A couple of things struck me while reading this book. The first being that your perspective of Australian inequality very much depends on when you were born; Leigh's anecdote is that older Australians have mostly experienced falling inequality throughout their lives, with the last few decades being "an aberration", whereas those in Generation Y have only seen increasing inequality.

The second was how high tax rates were during the War periods. In the later years of World War II, the top marginal tax bracket was 93%. Clearly this was required to shift resources from the private sector to the public sector to assist the war effort, but it also shows that Australians can withstand much higher tax rates providing it is linked to the national interest. This is quite relevant today, despite political rhetoric that 'Australians are paying too much tax'.

Overall, I thought it was worthwhile reading.