Posts by Rob Salmond
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to Paul Campbell,
What I’m not hearing from Labour is whether or not they will withdraw from the treaty if it is signed by National and they subsequently regain power.
That really depends on (1) what the treaty says about exit; and (2) how long it has been in force. If the treaty says you can exit, but only if you pay all the other countries a gazillion dollars, then Labour won't be exiting. If the treaty has been in place long enough that Pharmac has already disintegrated and the floodgates on foreign ownership of housing have opened even wider, then it may not be worth it to exit. We simply won't know ahead of seeing the agreement and knowing where we are when Labour has a chance to take action.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to Bart Janssen,
You mean prioritising the needs of all New Zealanders (consumers) over the needs of the rich businessmen (exporters).
Trade barriers in almost every form benefit the rich over the poor in both directions.
I think you'll find those exporters all have employees, many of whom are low wage, who lost their jobs when their industry disappeared.
And if trade barriers always favour the rich, why is it that the rich are so often on the side of more free trade, while the poor are more likely to be reticent. Mass altruism vs mass stupidity? I don't think so.
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to Bart Janssen,
So your logic is: we should not have done what was morally correct then because nobody else was bothering to do it.
Er, no, that's not my logic. I don't accept that unilateral free trade is "morally correct," because doing so involves prioritising the needs of consumers over the needs of exporters in an imperfectly competitive international environment. It's a trade-off, and I don't think any particular side of that trade-off is "morally correct."
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Why do you believe that the US Senate needs to ratify the TPPA? Doesn’t it, along with the House, just have to pass an implementing bill under the trade promotion authority?
Dammit, Edgelered again! You are right, of course. Please substitute "agree to" for "ratify."
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Polity: Too much to swallow on the TPP, in reply to Harry Musgrave,
Well - I guess we could always threaten to add back in some trade restrictions..
That would be a bit of an empty threat now that the uncompetitive industries we were previously protecting have now pretty much died (e.g. domestic car manufacturing)
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I have reflected overnight about the various reactions to my SST opinion piece, especially from those I named in that article.
First, and less important, Phil Quin protests that he never made any comparisons with the Rwandan genocide. I disagree with him, and I’m perfectly happy to point people to Phil’s original letter and let them make up their own minds about who’s playing cute word games and who isn’t. Here’s the link
More important were the reactions from Keith Ng and Tze Ming Mok. I made three references to Keith and Tze Ming in my piece (along with Chuan-Zheng Lee). In order:
First, I said:
After I published Labour’s method online, Keith Ng, Tze Ming Mok, and Chuan-Zheng Lee – all skilled analysts, all otherwise critical on this topic – all agreed the name-based ethnicity analysis was statistically sound, robust, and accurate.
On twitter yesterday, I pointed Keith to posts and tweets from each of them individually expressing support for the *method,* which was all I was discussing at that point in my article. (Link also to Storify stream I reference in my tweet
I understand Keith’s concerns with the *data*, although I don’t agree with him on that issue. But data and method are not the same thing, and I was discussing method alone. I think that is clear and unambiguous in the article. So I stand by this comment.
Second, I said:
Of course, they and others retained other criticisms of our work, relating to the steps after the main data analysis. I’ve engaged with them online through the last week, addressing their concerns and presenting additional data to support Labour’s conclusions.
Tze Ming’s criticism of this was that she, and others, did not accept the arguments I made last week when I was engaging with her and other critics. I agree with her on that, but never said that she had accepted anything. So I stand by this comment, too.
Third, I said:
Having said that, one group I think did not overreact – despite their strongly critical stance – was the New Zealand Chinese community, including Keith, Tze Ming, and Chuan-Zheng. Their criticism was less about Labour’s intentions, and more about the impact of these revelations on ethnically Chinese New Zealanders.
Here, I think I made a mistake. When I said “…less about Labour’s intentions, and more about the impact…” I was trying to compare this group’s reaction to the reaction of Phil Quin and others I had been discussing in the immediately preceding paragraphs. In my reading of the various reaction over the course of the week, that comparison is accurate.
Having said that, I accept in retrospect that my sentence can be construed in another way, to imply that members of the New Zealand Chinese community had few concerns about Labour’s intentions. That is untrue, as Keith and Tze Ming have pointed out.
I regret writing this sentence in an ambiguous manner.
(Posted on PA threads for both my piece and Keith’s, and notified to all four named parties via twitter.)
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I have reflected overnight about the various reactions to my SST opinion piece, especially from those I named in that article.
First, and less important, Phil Quin protests that he never made any comparisons with the Rwandan genocide. I disagree with him, and I’m perfectly happy to point people to Phil’s original letter and let them make up their own minds about who’s playing cute word games and who isn’t. Here’s the link
More important were the reactions from Keith Ng and Tze Ming Mok. I made three references to Keith and Tze Ming in my piece (along with Chuan-Zheng Lee). In order:
First, I said:
After I published Labour’s method online, Keith Ng, Tze Ming Mok, and Chuan-Zheng Lee – all skilled analysts, all otherwise critical on this topic – all agreed the name-based ethnicity analysis was statistically sound, robust, and accurate.
On twitter yesterday, I pointed Keith to posts and tweets from each of them individually expressing support for the *method,* which was all I was discussing at that point in my article. (Link also to Storify stream I reference in my tweet
I understand Keith’s concerns with the *data*, although I don’t agree with him on that issue. But data and method are not the same thing, and I was discussing method alone. I think that is clear and unambiguous in the article. So I stand by this comment.
Second, I said:
Of course, they and others retained other criticisms of our work, relating to the steps after the main data analysis. I’ve engaged with them online through the last week, addressing their concerns and presenting additional data to support Labour’s conclusions.
Tze Ming’s criticism of this was that she, and others, did not accept the arguments I made last week when I was engaging with her and other critics. I agree with her on that, but never said that she had accepted anything. So I stand by this comment, too.
Third, I said:
Having said that, one group I think did not overreact – despite their strongly critical stance – was the New Zealand Chinese community, including Keith, Tze Ming, and Chuan-Zheng. Their criticism was less about Labour’s intentions, and more about the impact of these revelations on ethnically Chinese New Zealanders.
Here, I think I made a mistake. When I said “…less about Labour’s intentions, and more about the impact…” I was trying to compare this group’s reaction to the reaction of Phil Quin and others I had been discussing in the immediately preceding paragraphs. In my reading of the various reaction over the course of the week, that comparison is accurate.
Having said that, I accept in retrospect that my sentence can be construed in another way, to imply that members of the New Zealand Chinese community had few concerns about Labour’s intentions. That is untrue, as Keith and Tze Ming have pointed out.
I regret writing this sentence in an ambiguous manner.
(Posted on PA threads for both my piece and Keith’s, and notified to all four named parties via twitter.)
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to simon g,
As we’re still debating what was said and meant, it’s useful to quote Phil Twyford’s original tweet (which he and Rob stand by):
https://twitter.com/PhilTwyford/status/619616896460062720
"Chinese NZers 9% Akl popn. People of Chinese descent bought 39.5% of houses sold by major Akl real estate firm. This is foreign money."
Chinese descent = foreign. No ambiguity there at all. No inferring needed.
Simon, you forgot the last three characters of that Phil Twyford tweet. They were "2/2". Here's what the "1/2" to that "2/2" said:
Thought long and hard about this story. It's not about having a go at Chinese NZers. Just look at the numbers. 1/2
Makes very explicit the distinction between "Chinese NZers" on the one hand, and "foreign money" on the other.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Alex Coleman,
What about the ones who didn’t decry ‘Labour MPs in 2014 for being too PC, and too consumed with identity politcs’? I’d say there are more of them among last weeks critics than the unnamed hypocrites you point towards.
Fair point they're in a different position. Quin and friends went from "Labour is too PC" to "Labour is a pack of nihilist, racist..." in half an hour. The other group you mention went from "Labour's about the right level of PC" to "Labour is a pack of nihilist, racist..." in half an hour.
That is an easier transition to make, to be sure, but I'd suggest is was still a bit hasty.
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Polity: A week on from the housing controversy, in reply to Sacha,
Here's a link to a transcript of Twyford's interview on The Nation last week: