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.
10 thoughts on “Duelling economists”
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John Quiggin 
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.