Good on you, Dr Eslake -  you’ve done something which seems to be getting rather more rare: persuasively and clearly arguing a point of view with rational use of factual and statistical evidence [as far as this layperson can tell], and without personal abuse, name-calling, pejorative labelling and closed-mind propagandising.

First, thanks for the full provenance of the “dismal science” quotation: puts it in quite a different light, doesn’t it ?

A bit like being reminded about the importance of the words “the love of” preceding “money is the root of all evil” in another saying so often misquoted.

Secondly, for the statistical detail which supports your contentions, clearly at variance with both the gloom-mongers of the progressivists and the Glad Tidings approach of Ms Giddings. How many of the daily “Tasmania is/has the world’s worst/best ”  sorts of claims have anything credible to back them ?

Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, the point that “Tasmania’s problem is not that its poor are poorer than in other States” [original italics and emphasis]. Clamourings to “Tax or Soak the Rich” are simplistic and naive at best, malicious and driven by a besetting envy at worst -  and entirely a waste of time and energy.

Lastly, for introducing to readers of TT Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen. These two links give readers some idea of his ideas on economics, politics and government:

http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/jod/10.3sen.html

http://unix.dfn.org/printer_EconomicFreedom_.shtml

Thanks for your comments, Leonard, I appreciate them. Thanks also for conferring an honorary doctorate on me, but I have too mucn respect for the amount of work required to obtain a PhD to fail to notify readers that I don’t have one. Just plain ‘Mr’, or, better still, Saul.