Arriving by boat in Australia does not increase the size of the refugee quota. It just changes who gets to the head of the queue and how many died trying to get to the head of the queue.
There is nothing compassionate about rewarding people for risking their lives. The chances of dying while attempting to come to Australia by boat are about 2%.
The recent experience in Europe confirms that just letting large numbers of refugees come to your country hardens the attitude of the majority of voters in that country to admitting refugees in general, much less more than their current quota.
This visiting American education professor who specialises in globalisation, claimed in the linked radio interview that real wages had fallen in the USA and Mexico. Even for the bottom 20% of the USA, their after-tax household incomes increased by 40% since 1979, with most of that after the signing of NAFTA.
Women’s earnings growth has been perfectly fine over the last 40 years despite the horrors of NAFTA and the attack on unions and workers rights by a top 1% emboldened by NAFTA and globalisation, if our visiting academic is to be believed.
Gender analysis, gender analysis, where is his gender analysis of NAFTA? Few labour market statistics make sense without being broken down by sex because of the immense economic progress of women in the last 50 years. Can NAFTA claim credit for that?
Trade diversion occurs when preferential trading agreements cause imports to shift from low cost countries to higher cost countries. Rather than gaining tariff revenue from inexpensive imports from world markets, a country may import expensive products from member countries but not gain any tariff revenue. An example of trade diversion is when Britain closed its doors to New Zealand agricultural exports after joining the common market.
Preferential trading agreements are trade agreements between countries in which they lower tariffs for each other but not for the rest of the world. The mass media mislabel them free trade agreements.
Under trade diversion, the partner country benefits from this change as an exporter, but the importing country loses due to this higher cost, as does the third country whose exports fall.
The loss to the importing country is not visible to consumers, who find the higher-cost product cheaper due to the absence of tariff. The country as a whole loses, with that loss being lost tariff revenue – lost to cover the cost of the higher cost imports from a member of the new preferential trading agreement.
It does not take much trade diversion to make a preferential trading agreement welfare reducing because of this switch to high cost producers.
The New Zealand Minister of Trade and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not discuss this major risk even from the simplest preferential trading agreement in recent policy analysis of the TPPA as my Official Information Act request has revealed. The term trade version does not appear in any of their analysis.
Adherents of the natural trading partner hypothesis argue that preferential trade agreements are more likely to improve welfare if participating countries already trade disproportionately with each other. Opponents of the hypothesis claim that the opposite is true: welfare gains are likely to be greater if participating countries trade less with each other. The powerful critique by Bhagwati and Panagariya (1996) is now widely accepted and one hears little justification of on preferential trading agreements on the grounds of the natural trading partners hypothesis
One of the cathartic things about leaving the public service is I do not have to be deferential to politicians anymore. I can treat them like ordinary people and tell them where to go when they annoy me. In consequence, I am not in any way nervous about appearing before a parliamentary committee.
A parade of conspiracy theories about the investor state dispute settlement process followed my testimony, which was first of the day. I left after about 45 minutes.
In my testimony, I got a standard question from David Clark, a Labour MP, about whether more time should be that given to make submissions because the complexities of the intellectual property chapter.
Kennedy Graham, the Green MP, then asked a bizarre question about how could New Zealand sign a trade agreement that would compromise environmental standards. His example was a trade agreement where it is agreed to start using coal as a power source again in New Zealand.
So weird with this question that I did not give the obvious answer which was this parade of horribles is so unlikely that it is not a serious question. What I did say was it is very unlikely New Zealand would ever sign such an agreement.
If a parade of horribles and weird hypotheticals is the best you can do, you do not have much of an argument against the TPPA.
What gave Amnesty International its strength, appeal and political credibility was most could agree with its opposition to the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience and to torture and that political prisoners should be put on trial.
Including child poverty as part of its most recent international annual report proves Robert Conquest’s 3rd law of politics: the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies
Amnesty International should not be giving people reasons not to join. It should stick to its original mission, which most people support. An NGO with members from across the political spectrum has much more credibility and influence.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Source: Another way for refugees | Australian Greens.
Source: Kiwiblog.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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