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The Forum > Article Comments > Return of protectionism > Comments

Return of protectionism : Comments

By Saul Eslake, published 1/9/2011

The only thing the government can do for manufacturing while maintaining collective wealth is to help it maintain productivity.

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Yabby:"Because the little woman
does not want to stay home anymore to darn your socks, she's out
there making a quid to pay for that next overseas holiday."

And we're spending enormous amounts of money from Government revenue to satisfy her want. Shame she's not very productive (about half as productive as her hubby, according to Goldman Sachs) and that she's doing stuff she used to do anyway as a matter of personal pride in the family. At least she's "contributing"...sort of.

42% of female apprentices study hairdressing, according to the ABS.

On the subject of protectionism, I'm not at all supportive. While I have made a living for the past 8 years out of sullpying timber to the building industry, the fact is that timber from overseas is cheaper and it's better, in many cases, than anything I can produce with the forest resources available here. So I'm getting out of the business. If the Govt was to prop up people like me with tariff barriers I'd be better placed to compete, but I'd still be supplying an inferior product. Who benefits?

My next venture will be in the food service industry. People have to eat and there's no competitive pressure from overseas (or from within the home, what with "the little woman" so busy dressing hair. Perhaps rehctub and I can do some business.
Posted by Antiseptic, Friday, 2 September 2011 6:54:18 AM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12521#216855

imajulianutter, correct, there is not now & never was a "level playing field".

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12521#216862

Rhian,

#1, the only reason why we need to export anything is to pay for our imports. if you stop or reduce imports, you can stop or reduce exports. i am well aware of what a "current account deficit" is, i remember dicussing it with Don Chip in "1984" & both of us predicting the "recession we had to have" 6 years before it happened.

#2, improving quality/service can be achieved in other ways, we are an innovative people.

#3, i would end all "corporate welfare" tomorow & replace it with something else similar to a tarriff barrier but different enough to encourage competition between multiple players within our economy, together with limited exports of top quality Australian products for exchange with top quality products from other nations.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12521#216863

curmudgeon, i am with you & julian in that a reasonably priced/structured resource rent tax is a good idea, we just can't trust closet communists to get it right, there is always devil in the detail with luciferians.

i am not forgeting history at all. the dream ended in 1972 when Comrade Whitlam willfully committed economic treason.

EG, our cattle farmers were hard working & efficient in the 1970's as they are now, Comrade Whitlam destroyed it overnight by radically inreasing the dollars value overnight.

Just as Comrade Dillard repeated the trick, overnight by using faux concern about animals to justify killing off the "live" trade. Both the Loony Left & Raving Right hate small & medium sized business because it is too independent, innovative & democratic.

Big business, (especially when it is foreign owned multinationals) is just as evil as big unions & big government.

Give me Clive Palmer & Twiggy Forest over Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton or Extrata any day.

High unemployment & bad economic performance was "manufactured" by Comrade Whitlam simultaneously lowering the tarriff barrier & raising the dollar value.
Posted by Formersnag, Friday, 2 September 2011 8:38:04 AM
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Well, Saul, what a convoluted and totally useless article.

Your final "gem":

<Seeking to preserve, as if in aspic, the composition of Australian economic activity and employment as it was in some year gone by ...>

How can anyone "preserve" something which by definition has passed into history? Piffle, piffle and more piffle. In any event, the whole purpose of the exercise is supposed to be to find a way forward, not to lecture us on what we shouldn't do.

Why is it that someone who starts a statement with <It’s an inescapable truth that...> is almost always just about to feed you a large slice of twaddle?

The mining (more specific than "resource") boom is an opportunity - an opportunity to develop long-term industries and jobs for the time when the boom declines, and before oil shortage propels massive development of alternative methods of maintaining essentials and of doing business in manufacturing, transportation, energy production, etc. "There is a time in the tides of men, which, taken at the flood...."

We don't need tariffs, embargo's, quotas or overt protectionism, but we do need good governance, vision, enterprise and determination. Oz, and every other nation, should be looking to both a reasonable level of self-sufficiency and to maximising its natural advantages. We have a host of natural resources but we fail to value-add. We use all sorts of excuses for this, but the reality is that Italy could make good use of our animal skins (hides) to make fine leather, and Italy is not a third world country, Japan could weave our wool, and the USA make high quality steel from our ore - so why can't we do these things? Do we always have to look too small, to just give up when the going gets tough? Come on, we're way better than that!

So, come on CSIRO, come on SydUni, ANU, UNSW etc, and come on Julia and Tony, and let's get the wagon back on the tracks! No nation becomes great by resting on it laurels, but by thinking ahead, and by investing in the future.
Posted by Saltpetre, Friday, 2 September 2011 9:25:56 AM
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http://www.cattlefacts.com.au/ArticleAustBeefHistory98Comp.htm

There you go Formersnag, a bit of education in your old age.

The cattle industry crashed in the 70s, because Australia had
lost the British market and oversupply subsequently crashed the
US market.

But I know, I know, some of you don't like the facts interfering
with your story telling.
Posted by Yabby, Friday, 2 September 2011 10:19:07 AM
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If this is as good as we get from a leader of a think tank, well Aust is doomed and will merely become a quarry for the developing world.

There goes any job prospect I ever had at the Grattan Institute.

And Saul, do you have any detailed study of economic patterns over the last 20 years to show that all is well? I think that is what Aust realy needs rather than feel good simplistic opinion pieces.

Please if there is anyone out there that wants to undertake a comprehensive study of freer trade and recent policy developments, please sponsor me. no one will work harder in aswering such a question.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Friday, 2 September 2011 10:33:38 AM
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Saul Eslake

According to Gerald Ford, if a wage earner or his wife got into the habit of speaking or writing about their economy all day long, they would have no economy to live from.

So, any person who spends his/her time to think and write about an abstruse subject, be it economy, politics or religion wastes the time necessary to producing for his/her maintenance and has to parasite on others.

Probably at the university you studied your economy no one knew or took care to tell you that the only currency in life, anyone’s life, is time.

Hence, in writing this comment to your script I am economically negative.

That is according to the limited economy of wealth production which seems the only economy that concerns you.
Posted by skeptic, Friday, 2 September 2011 11:02:15 AM
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