I don’t follow Twitter much because it doesn’t add much more than a Seinfeldian quip to any debate. So I missed this little exchange a few weeks ago when we started calling out Greg Jericho’s slump into anti-intellectualism:
If we’re offending the Fake Left and Right then that’s good. One does not open a debate without breaking a few eggs. I’m curious about union economist Matt Cowgill’s assertion that MB has “devolved into something much nastier”? I presume this is because we have an unsentimental view of the role that mass immigration plays in the economy.
We support a doubling of the refugee intake and more than halving of the net permanent migrant intake. The change in numbers aims to take pressure of living standards in eastern cities, to allow house prices to deflate and to ease pressure on wages as the real exchange rate adjustment transpires resulting from a slowing China. It’s a lot less nasty than persecuting boat people with one hand while denuding developing economies of their skilled workers with the other.
There are always losers with any economic reform. If immigration were cut back some would-be migrants would no doubt lose out, to the benefit of their home countries. How are they any different from the Baby Boomers that will lose out when negative gearing is reformed? Or when imputation credits are wound back? Or, for that matter, different from Leith and I who would lose out with these reforms. They’re not. The point about reform is always utilitarian in that it should be done for the greater good.
The policy dimensions of MB are about the national interest. We don’t care about political parties, or institutions, or prestige, or fitting in with a self-preening masthead.
If that is nasty then guilty as charged, your honour.
