Scott Wickstein raises a bunch of issues about the economists’ statement in support of Kyoto. First, is the question of cost-benefit ratios. There are a lot of measures (e.g. withdrawing subsidies from the aluminium industry) that would both reduce emissions and reduce national income. A full implementation of Kyoto based on tradeable emissions quotas would cost less than 0.5 per cent of GDP ($3 billion per year) on most estimates.
Admittedly, this is, essentially a first installment. A serious response to global warming will require much deeper cuts in emissions and the involvement of developing countries. But the alternative of doing nothing is too awful to contemplate, which is why opponents of Kyoto try to divert attention away from this point. At a minimum, the costs would include the loss of most or all of the world’s coral reefs the complete disappearance of many Pacific nations and large-scale flooding in low-lying countries. Vast numbers of species with limited range would become extinct.

In this context, the fact that the current government of the United States (2.5 years left in office) is opposed to any form of international treaty, is an unfortunate obstacle, but scarcely decisive. The US, is after all, a debtor nation with a massive trade deficit. When Kyoto is ratified, it will be possible to impose tariffs on exports of non-complying countries if those exports embody substantial untaxed use of carbon. And. among the many treaties the US is currently repudiating, Kyoto is the one with the strongest domestic political support.

Of course, the complying countries would not be in a hurry to pick a fight with the US. It would be much easier to start by making an example of a US lapdog with big dependence on energy-intensive exports and no real capacity for retaliation – any guesses as to who will be the first target?

Update: Scott also endorses the rantings of the ironically self-styled Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. If you want to see why the US is overstretching its capacities in all respects, you only have to observe that stuff like this is taken seriously there.

14th August 2002
News release
Contact Dr Clive Hamilton 02 6249 6221 0413 993 223
Professor John Quiggin 0417 744 614
RATIFY KYOTO – ECONOMISTS
More than 250 of Australia’s academic economists today called on Prime Minister John Howard to ratify the Kyoto Protocol without delay.
The 254 economists, including 39 Professors, are signatories to a statement calling on the Prime Minister to ratify the Protocol in Australia’s economic and environmental interests.
“As economists, we believe that global climate change carries with it serious environmental, economic and social risks and that preventive steps are justified,” the statement says.
“Policy options are available that would slow climate change without harming employment or living standards in Australia, and these may in fact improve productivity in the long term.”
The economists’ statement follows warnings from 2000 international scientists under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of new and stronger evidence that global warming is attributable to human activities, and warnings from the CSIRO that climate change has the potential to seriously disrupt agricultural output, water flows and natural systems in Australia.
The statement and the list of signatories will be delivered to the Prime Minister’s office at 11 am today.
The statement and full list of signatories may be viewed under What’s New on the Australia Institute website.
http://www.tai.org.au

A nice piece from Scott Rosenberg at Salon. He doesn’t mention blogging specifically (being Salon’s Chief of Blogging, it might have looked too much like a plug) but it’s a perfect example of what he’s talking about – the fact that the Internet is stronger than ever, even as the dreams that powered dotcom domain spiral ever downward into financial oblivion.

Now that the triumphalist rhetoric has died down a bit, it’s interesting to look at what is still special about the US economy. The answer is not, as might be imagined, productivity. In terms of both output per hour and total factor productivity, this comparative study of US and European productivity shows that the US is near the top of the world league table, but is outperformed by several European countries – in fact, it’s almost even with Italy on both counts.
The US is above average in terms of participation rates – the proportion of the adult population that’s in the labour force – and a little bit better-than-average in terms of unemployment. Again though, there are lots of European countries that do better on these scores.
The really outstanding feature of the US economy is the incredibly long average working hours. Annual working hours in the US are above 2000 per person, whereas the European average is around 1600. It is this fact that accounts for the big gap in income per person between the US and the rest of the world.
From an economic viewpoint, there’s nothing much to be said about the optimal choice between income and leisure.. If Americans just like working more than Europeans, then both economies are doing a good job. On the other hand, if labor market institutions force Americans to work more than they want to, or Europeans to work less, there’s a welfare loss.
One point in favour of the Europeans is that working hours have generally declined with rising incomes. So the converse trend in the US in the last twenty years suggests either unusual preferences or malfunctioning institutions.

Jason Soon responds to my post on Theodore Dalrymple, but gets his logic confused. As he observes, Dalrymple and some libertarians have argued for an intellectually consistent libertarian policy, namely allowing free immigration while cutting off all welfare services to immigrants. I made the point that most Australian free-marketeers take an intellectually inconsistent line, attacking government intervention the welfare state and barriers to cross-border flows in general, while supporting extreme ‘border protection’ measures in relation to asylum-seekers.
Jason writes ” If Quiggin is prepared to endorse this most radical experiment [the Dalrymple line] he should speak up. Otherwise he should stop accusing people of hypocrisy. ”
It should be obvious to Jason that my support or lack of it for the Dalrymple line can make no difference to the question of whether the IPA, CIS and so on are intellectually inconsistent. Jason suggests I am accusing them of “hypocrisy”, which implies conscious dishonesty rather than inconsistency. I don’t have the evidence to make a judgement on this.
For the record, my view, which I expressed in the Fin before the election is that neither ‘border protection’ on the Howard model nor open slather is a good policy. I favor an increase in the total refugee intake, and attempts to make more orderly arrangements with source countries. (Among other things, this would bring into reality the fictional ‘queue’, that asylum-seekers are regularly accused of jumping). This should be combined with an approach to ‘boat people’ which is based on humanity and good sense rather than scaremongering. This would include detention of those at high risk of absconding, but would not use detention without trial in desert camps as a method of deterrence. We manage a reasonable balance in relation to bail for those accused of crimes considerably worse than breaches of immigration laws. If it weren’t for the racial/religious panic that has been deliberately whipped up, we could do the same in relation to this issue.

Don Arthur joins the fray on Theo Dalrymple (real name = Anthony Daniels?, real nationality = ?, real occupation = ?). As Don points out, although the Australian right loves Dalrymple’s claim that most (British) asylum seekers are bogus, they are in something of a bind. Unlike the genuine refugees, who are merely fleeing persecution, Dalrymple observes that the “illegals” are entrepreneurs willing to risk life, limb and liberty in the search for economic opportunity for themselves and their families – just the sort of people the CIS, IPA and the rest of the alphabet soup of right wing think tanks ought to love. But as far as I can tell, every notable organisational manifestation of the free-market right, with the exception of Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute has line up behind Pauline Hanson (and her more successful imitator, John Howard) on this issue.

Alan Anderson writes
“there is little better evidence of the ivory tower disposition of academics than their unwillingness to accept that they do not have a God-given right to enormous public subsidies, and their reluctance to open the education market to competitive forces which might reveal the actual levels of consumer satisfaction with their services.”

As I pointed out a week or so ago, opening the education market to competitive forces has been a recipe for duplication and inefficiency – 39 different MBA programs being a case in point.] Alan rightly deplored this and called for more central planning.

Alan should get out of his own ivory tower occasionally and take a look at the facts. If he did, he’s be less prone to slogans like those quoted above.

Look to your left! New links to Alan Anderson, Rob Schaap, Tex’s Pre-whacked snakes and Tom Vogelgesang.

For me, the old days means:
(1) The days when I first got to use a terminal instead of punch cards
(2) The first two years of Macintosh
(3) The Web circa 1995

Anyway, having reverse-engineered Tim Dunlop’s site, I’ve figured out how to add comments to my blog (so much more satisfying than just asking!). Please send comments, remembering that this is a PG site.

While I’m talking about Tim, I have one (hyphenated) word for him — Control-Click. (If Tim can get his archive working under Windoze, I’ll link to the relevant post)

The Australian: IG Index betting stoush spreads [August 12, 2002]
These guys are offering stock market bets as an untaxed substitute for pokies and ponies. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.