Jim's Personal Newsletter + Update May 2026
The budget, birth-rate crisis plus more!
The Budget
Forty years ago, Paul Keating gave the ‘banana republic’ message that launched Australia on the road to prosperity.
Reduced spending, reduced debt, reduced taxes, reduced red tape, and lower tariffs.
The result: decades of lower inflation and rising real wages.
Jim Chalmers likes to cite Keating, but what a contrast!
More spending, higher taxes, more red tape, more debt.
And times are relatively good. What happens when a real crisis hits?
We can’t even spend enough on defence to secure our security, even if you count nuclear submarines that may or may not arrive decades into the future.
Making Friends
Enough complaining.
The Laws of Connection by David Robson.
A wonderful and very practical book about how to build friendship and connection. I’ve been trying to put some of these ideas into practice.
My best book of the year so far, and I’ll be listening to it again quite soon, to help drive the lessons home.
Re-reading
A really good practice is to go back to books I’ve loved in the past.
I’ve just listened again to The Expectation Effect, which is chock full of ideas about how to live a better and healthier life.
The Brain that Changes itself, by David McRamey has fascinating stories about how our brains can be reprogrammed, and his subsequent book, How Minds Change is also good.
Birth Rate Crisis
We are online for a release date in October.
I’ve added Andrea, my editor, as a co-author. Her story, as a mother who has struggled to have more children, adds a welcome and humanising viewpoint.
I really think this book will do well. With Andrea’s help, it is accessible and a great guide to a happy and meaningful life.
And we really do have a solution to the birth rate crisis. Just one that nobody else is considering.
Jimbo
Our franchise scheduling and billing system has now been approved for general release, though more than a thousand franchisees are currently using it.
We’re putting some pressure on the others to take it up, especially those who have issues with customer service.
Two major benefits.
Systems to reduce complaints, such as reminding franchisees to call clients and keep them informed.
Based on past experience, better customer service will cause leads to soar.
Ways to increase franchisee income. Jimbo will make it easy to sell outlying clients, reducing both fees and travel time.
Direct booking of appointments should increase conversion rates.
Inbuilt accounting software will save many franchisees close to a thousand dollars a year.
AI
Finding it an amazing tool to speed up work on my books, and also working with Joel Kleber on a system to teach Mandarin, which we hope to attach to the Jim’s Client App to encourage uptake.
AI also has huge potential for benefit in terms of developing new medical treatments etc.
But I am more than a little concerned about its potential for harm, including the security of data systems, the development of biological warfare, and the potential extinction of humanity.
Great dangers, great potential benefits.
The benefits of self-driving cars
I’ve just looked up the stats and Waymo accident rates are 80-90% less than for human driven cars.
Can’t happen in Australia because of regulations and legal liability.
Let’s put this another way. 1300 people a year are dying on Australian roads. Replace just 20% of drivers with automatic systems, and maybe 200 lives a year will be saved.
That’s 200 people killed and tens of thousands more injured by our bloated, inefficient government.
As always, follow me on social media at @thejimpenman and check out the conversations with Jim podcast where I have a lot about my research.