Good news for Marxists and immigration lawyers -
The Press reports the Green Party has called for a big increase in New Zealand's annual refugee quota as part of its immigration and population policy.
In a bid to widen its base from "traditional environmental issues" the party intends to push for a boost in the annual quota from 750 to 1000 by 2010. The Greens sat they are also planning to make it easier for parents and immediate family members of new migrants to apply for residency and to make marriage, civil unions and de facto partnership re-unifications exempt from all quotas.
How exactly all this is supposed to benefit the environment is of course left unmentioned.
The Greens are at least honest enough to admit their is no economic benefit to increased refugee quotas and they wish to do so for "humanitarian" reasons. However, in the long run I'd even question whether bringing immigrants from third world countries to industrialised western countries is particularly humane.
There's increasing anecdotal evidence that the majority of refugees from economically poor countries are struggling to adapt to life in western countries and are ending up at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. In terms of access to health and welfare services they are no doubt better off, but in terms of finding employment and fitting into the local community they might be better off being sponsored to live in a non-western country with a similar culture to their country of origin.
Furthermore, the burden of re-settling refugees in western countries falls disproportionately on working-class citizens who live in the communities where refugees are usually settled.
Sponsoring refugees to live in other countries should appeal to left -leaning parties since more of the burden for re-settlement would fall on middle class and upper income taxpayers rather than the working class.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Cliche of the week
From the Prime Minister in a recent press interview -
"This country was built on migration, whether it was the first people who came out in canoes or my forebears, who came out to the goldrush in Cromwell.
We have had waves of migrations, which have helped to grow and develop New Zealand."
Considering just how many politicians use this argument to justify pro-immigration policies it might be worth considering if there is actually a country in the world that wasn't built on immigration.
Maybe one or two countries in Eastern Africa like Keyna (or wherever modern humans first originated), but even that's doubtful. Those who inhabit Kenya today may well be immigrants from other parts of Africa.
Hence, the total meaningless of saying a country is built on immigrants.
Of course the "built on immigrants" argument is not used to remind us about the obvious, but to imply that ongoing immigration will make a country richer and existing citizens better off.
However, just because a country is built on immigration doesn't automatically mean its likely to get better with further immigration. For example, Argentina was an affluent country until the 1930s, but despite on-going immigration, it never managed to recapture its high income status. A good argument could be made that Argentina should have stayed small and not diluted its agricultural wealth by increasing its population and half-heartedly attempting to became an industrial economy.
People were making the same argument in New Zealand a hundred years ago, and who's to say they weren't right - in 1900 New Zealand was the richest country in the world per capita, now its near the bottom of the developed world. Those of us who have arrived since then may be better off for it, but some of those who were already here were/are probably worse off for our arrival.
"This country was built on migration, whether it was the first people who came out in canoes or my forebears, who came out to the goldrush in Cromwell.
We have had waves of migrations, which have helped to grow and develop New Zealand."
Considering just how many politicians use this argument to justify pro-immigration policies it might be worth considering if there is actually a country in the world that wasn't built on immigration.
Maybe one or two countries in Eastern Africa like Keyna (or wherever modern humans first originated), but even that's doubtful. Those who inhabit Kenya today may well be immigrants from other parts of Africa.
Hence, the total meaningless of saying a country is built on immigrants.
Of course the "built on immigrants" argument is not used to remind us about the obvious, but to imply that ongoing immigration will make a country richer and existing citizens better off.
However, just because a country is built on immigration doesn't automatically mean its likely to get better with further immigration. For example, Argentina was an affluent country until the 1930s, but despite on-going immigration, it never managed to recapture its high income status. A good argument could be made that Argentina should have stayed small and not diluted its agricultural wealth by increasing its population and half-heartedly attempting to became an industrial economy.
People were making the same argument in New Zealand a hundred years ago, and who's to say they weren't right - in 1900 New Zealand was the richest country in the world per capita, now its near the bottom of the developed world. Those of us who have arrived since then may be better off for it, but some of those who were already here were/are probably worse off for our arrival.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Yuppie populism trumps old-right conservatism
If New Zealand had a genuinely conservative government one of the things it would do would be to try and balance the interests of producers and consumers and savers and spenders.
Unfortunately, in company with the US we have an unbalanced right-liberal economy in which producers and savers are hammered while consumers are pampered.
While conservatism is concerned primarily with stability and balance, today's reigning neo-liberalism emphasizes individual freedom, and when people are given unrestricted freedom they usually behave in an unbalanced way. Interest rates may well be a key aspect of this lack of balance in economic policy. Over the last decade or so interest rates in New Zealand have been running at about 8 per cent per annum on average.
Now you might think high interest rates would have led to reduced spending and more saving, but the opposite has actually occurred - savings have stagnated while consumer spending has skyrocketed.
Critics such as Kel Sanderson argue that the Reserve Bank's high interest rates attracted more overseas capital than the country needed for growth and development leaving the banks awash in surplus funds. Thus lending practices have been loosened and more consumers have been encouraged to max out their credit cards and take out heavily leveraged mortgages.
Possibly the only reason we haven't had the kind of banking crisis seen in the US is that in this country the gap between wage rates and house prices is so high that people with poor credit histories have almost no show of paying off their mortgages so even the most cock-sure mortgage brokers wouldn't entertain trying to get them into a home.
To add insult to injury, savers have been discouraged from taking advantage of these high interest rates by hefty withholding taxes.
High interest rates have also pushed up property prices by making property speculation one of the few ways of making a profitable living. Despite the fact that Labour (like its UK counterpart) is constantly patting it self on the back for its supposed fiscal prudence, the country is sliding back towards ongoing trade imbalances.
Yet another way in which savers and producers have been penalised has been in the government's attitude to research and development spending. Economic development experts are frequently pointing out New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of private research and development spending in the OECD.
After two terms in office Labour finally decided to offer businesses some tax relief for research and development spending. However even this token measure of producerism has been crushed by the rabidly consumerist National Party.
I was briefly considering voting for National after hearing about its plan to substantially increase spending on transport and communications infrastructure, but this latest insult means something pretty out of the blue would have to happen policy wise before I'd consider voting for either of the two main parties.
Unfortunately, in company with the US we have an unbalanced right-liberal economy in which producers and savers are hammered while consumers are pampered.
While conservatism is concerned primarily with stability and balance, today's reigning neo-liberalism emphasizes individual freedom, and when people are given unrestricted freedom they usually behave in an unbalanced way. Interest rates may well be a key aspect of this lack of balance in economic policy. Over the last decade or so interest rates in New Zealand have been running at about 8 per cent per annum on average.
Now you might think high interest rates would have led to reduced spending and more saving, but the opposite has actually occurred - savings have stagnated while consumer spending has skyrocketed.
Critics such as Kel Sanderson argue that the Reserve Bank's high interest rates attracted more overseas capital than the country needed for growth and development leaving the banks awash in surplus funds. Thus lending practices have been loosened and more consumers have been encouraged to max out their credit cards and take out heavily leveraged mortgages.
Possibly the only reason we haven't had the kind of banking crisis seen in the US is that in this country the gap between wage rates and house prices is so high that people with poor credit histories have almost no show of paying off their mortgages so even the most cock-sure mortgage brokers wouldn't entertain trying to get them into a home.
To add insult to injury, savers have been discouraged from taking advantage of these high interest rates by hefty withholding taxes.
High interest rates have also pushed up property prices by making property speculation one of the few ways of making a profitable living. Despite the fact that Labour (like its UK counterpart) is constantly patting it self on the back for its supposed fiscal prudence, the country is sliding back towards ongoing trade imbalances.
Yet another way in which savers and producers have been penalised has been in the government's attitude to research and development spending. Economic development experts are frequently pointing out New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of private research and development spending in the OECD.
After two terms in office Labour finally decided to offer businesses some tax relief for research and development spending. However even this token measure of producerism has been crushed by the rabidly consumerist National Party.
I was briefly considering voting for National after hearing about its plan to substantially increase spending on transport and communications infrastructure, but this latest insult means something pretty out of the blue would have to happen policy wise before I'd consider voting for either of the two main parties.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Liberal economics coming unstuck?
Gwynne Dyer has written a pretty good summary of last week's financial bail-out in which he's criticised the media for over-hyping the extent of the banking crisis. Whether the West is due for a major depression over the next decade or so is still anyone's guess, but if a serious depression does occur, I agree that it's unlikely to take the same form it took in 1929.
Common sense suggests that having been through many previous financial crises over the last century, Western governments are pretty adept at dealing with acute problems in the financial sector.
Similarly, with so many workers now cushioned by the welfare state, there is less of a temptation for governments to resort to widespread protectionism to save jobs, which was one of the major issues in the 1930s.
However, western countries now face a number of serious long-term economic problems which didn't exist back in the thirties.The big question now is whether the West can deal with the chronic economic problems associated with de-industrialisation, rising energy and welfare costs and continuing immigration from second and third world countries with a poor economic track record.
In some ways it's probably fortunate this banking crisis has occurred sooner rather than later - if it occurred smack bang in the middle of another surge in oil prices and baby-boomer pension claims things could have been a lot worse.
Another concern is that many of the pundits who are willing to acknowledge these chronic problems, tend to be Ron Paul-style libertarians with a dogmatic attachment to classical liberalism. For example, pro-Ron Paul business commentator Peter Shiff predicted the current banking crisis back in 2006, but his credibility is undermined in my view by exaggerated claims about inflation and the wonders of the gold standard.
Shiff's approach is easy to attack, since critics can simply argue that classical liberalism failed spectacularly in the 1920s, and that's the reason why we now have a Keynesian economic system in which the government intervenes in the economy to smooth out recessions.
The dismissal of anti-Keynesian arguments by mainstream pundits is unfortunate, as they're quite right to question the use of Keynesian style economic policies to deal with today's economic problems.
In the 1930s, most people worked in productive jobs in farming and manufacturing, lived within their means, and received little in the way of government welfare or services.
Hence there was wasn't much economic danger in using government money to kick-start economic demand by increasing welfare spending and initiating public works programmes.
However, in today's consumption-driven post-industrial society, with its bloated public sector, extensive use of Keynesian policies doesn't make much sense. In a world dominated by liberal ideology, economists tend to view the health of the economy abstractly in terms of rational financial management, rather than concretely, in terms of the traditions and human capital on which economies are constructed and sustained.
Both right and left wing liberals are of the view that de-industrialisation is of little consequence, workers are interchangeable and culture can be replaced by financial incentives. I'll believe that when Toyotas are made in Zaire, billionaires opt for Argentinian banks, and IT entrepreneurs flock to Afghanistan.
Since today's economic problems go beyond the financial sphere perhaps non-mainstream economic theorists like Schumpeter, Veblen, Braudel, and List who put greater emphasis on technology, culture and human bio-diversity, should be read a little more widely.
Common sense suggests that having been through many previous financial crises over the last century, Western governments are pretty adept at dealing with acute problems in the financial sector.
Similarly, with so many workers now cushioned by the welfare state, there is less of a temptation for governments to resort to widespread protectionism to save jobs, which was one of the major issues in the 1930s.
However, western countries now face a number of serious long-term economic problems which didn't exist back in the thirties.The big question now is whether the West can deal with the chronic economic problems associated with de-industrialisation, rising energy and welfare costs and continuing immigration from second and third world countries with a poor economic track record.
In some ways it's probably fortunate this banking crisis has occurred sooner rather than later - if it occurred smack bang in the middle of another surge in oil prices and baby-boomer pension claims things could have been a lot worse.
Another concern is that many of the pundits who are willing to acknowledge these chronic problems, tend to be Ron Paul-style libertarians with a dogmatic attachment to classical liberalism. For example, pro-Ron Paul business commentator Peter Shiff predicted the current banking crisis back in 2006, but his credibility is undermined in my view by exaggerated claims about inflation and the wonders of the gold standard.
Shiff's approach is easy to attack, since critics can simply argue that classical liberalism failed spectacularly in the 1920s, and that's the reason why we now have a Keynesian economic system in which the government intervenes in the economy to smooth out recessions.
The dismissal of anti-Keynesian arguments by mainstream pundits is unfortunate, as they're quite right to question the use of Keynesian style economic policies to deal with today's economic problems.
In the 1930s, most people worked in productive jobs in farming and manufacturing, lived within their means, and received little in the way of government welfare or services.
Hence there was wasn't much economic danger in using government money to kick-start economic demand by increasing welfare spending and initiating public works programmes.
However, in today's consumption-driven post-industrial society, with its bloated public sector, extensive use of Keynesian policies doesn't make much sense. In a world dominated by liberal ideology, economists tend to view the health of the economy abstractly in terms of rational financial management, rather than concretely, in terms of the traditions and human capital on which economies are constructed and sustained.
Both right and left wing liberals are of the view that de-industrialisation is of little consequence, workers are interchangeable and culture can be replaced by financial incentives. I'll believe that when Toyotas are made in Zaire, billionaires opt for Argentinian banks, and IT entrepreneurs flock to Afghanistan.
Since today's economic problems go beyond the financial sphere perhaps non-mainstream economic theorists like Schumpeter, Veblen, Braudel, and List who put greater emphasis on technology, culture and human bio-diversity, should be read a little more widely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
