For those interested, I’ll be featured in the ‘Duel’ segment of Saturday’s Fin, in combat with Wolfgang Kasper on the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the US.
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I suppose one of the arguments against a FTA with the US is that it will mean the end of our local content rules for TV.
Just think: no more Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
I suppose one of the arguments against a FTA with the US is that it will mean the end of our local content rules for TV.
Just think: no more Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
I’m more concerned with keeping finite-duration copyright and parallel importing (which I suppose goes in the opposite direction to local content rules).
Good luck to you! Wolfgang thinks my boss Henry Ergas is too statist.
PS that comment does not imply that I will be on your side of course
Wishes for luck gratefully accepted, without implication!
Wolfgang Kasper is a Sudeten Czech. This says it all.
Wolfgang Kasper supporting a free trade agreement with the US instead of advocating a mulilateral free trade agreement is not the neo-classical economist I remember.
What is going on? supporting tariffs next!
Scott’s Law of Economists – An economist is a lawyer with a mathematical bent.
This clearly applies here.
It’s the Politics, Stupid!
Although the PM does not actually like US culture very much, – he is a UK Anglophile – he is very much a part of the Australia-as-part-of-the-Anglospehre idea. This means facilitating the cross-ownersip, -trade, -migratory -defence and
-cultural relations between Aust & the hegemonial Anglo power – the US.
Remember, John Winston HOward’s namesake wrote “History of the English Speaking People”.
Thus Australia is steadily becoming a province of Anglo-America, more similar to California than the Home Counties.
The recent evidence on expats indicates that up to one million (5%) Australians live abroad, mainly in the Anglosphere, with up to 500,000 not planning to return anytime soon.
Most of these Aussies are childless, willing & able adults, which is quite a significant portion (~10%) of the work force. And many of them, > 50%, earn > $100,000.
Thus a steadily increasing fraction of our best & brightest are becoming Anglospheric metropolitans, a prediction made by my late, and great, teacher: Dr Frank Knopfelmacher.
Following his nomeclature, I dub this fabled land of expatriates: Anglomorphia.
So I guess the cost of letting our winners bask in the adulation of their peers in the Anglomorphic heartland is furhter assimilation to the commerical rules of the New London ie: sacrificing local content and cheap copyright.