Progressive Protectionism

* Book: Progressive Protectionism. Colin Hines.

URL = http://progressiveprotectionism.com/wordpress/

Review

Richard Murphy:

"A new book called Progressive Protectionism by Colin Hines, who is the convenor of the Green New Deal group, provides some such uncomfortable thinking. I do not agree with all Colin says, and nor do many in the Green New Deal group, and yet what Colin has to say is now both timely and maybe even necessary. . . he argues . . . that the Treaty of Rome that underpins that whole edifice should be amended and replaced by what he calls a Treaty of Home.

Colin is a long time environmentalist and argues that we should replace global capitalism with strong local economies. This is not only green, but he also argues it is the way to tackle many other issues. Capital controls, for example, would let us more effectively tackle tax abuse and so build a more equal and just society. They would also end a focus on speculation that is creating massively harmful inequality in our country, and others. Controls on trade would, Colin argues, support local economies and jobs and massively reduce the enormous carbon cost of much of world trade.

But, and this is where for many the argument will be uncomfortable, this also requires control on migration. Colin does not argue that anyone should have to leave their country of residence. And nor does he suggest there should be no migration: he is quite explicit about the fact that there will be many reasons why it can and should exist. But equally he argues that economic migration is not a virtue, and even that is troubling for many. Colin has been banned from some left of centre discussion forums for even raising it as a concern.

Colin carefully documents that our open doors policy for those who train in poorer countries and then work here denudes those countries of the skills they need to provide a better standard of living for those who live in their home countries and is little better than a new form of economic colonialism on occasion. We extract people and their incomes from other countries as surely now as we once extracted the raw materials and products of those countries at an undervalue in the past.

In that way Colin argues that a policy that deliberately fosters the idea of encouraging people to stay where they are, and builds foreign and aid policy around that goal is now not just a priority, but an issue of social justice when data shows that most migrants move the minimum distance possible from their homes to achieve their goals . . " (https://goodmorningamericaword.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/review-of-progressive-protectionism-a-new-book-by-colin-hines/)