I feel reassured by the Hon Tim Groser's short epistle on TPP (The best deal, August 25) despite its weight of rhetoric and lightness on detail.
"Massive benefits" for our economy? What benefits exactly?
"Help to create more jobs ... and lift incomes". How exactly? I see indicationsthat bigger trade volumes might be absorbed by mechanisation rather than job creation. And why would incomes be lifted? Isn't trickle-down largely discredited?
"We can't get rich by selling stuff to ourselves." Really? What about circulation or trickle across? Surely it might at least maintain if not increase jobs and incomes?
It's like degrees of adhesion instead of degrees of separation. If my money goes offshore at first spending - eg at most retail outlets - the opportunity to sustain many more Kiwi jobs and incomes is lost at that point.
The fiscal circulation afforded by local manufacturing might make us comfortable, rather than rich, but prosperous in other ways; personal, social, communal, in esprit de corps. These are called incidental benefits, aren't they? I guess you can't put a money value on them. Don't they count anymore?
But then Mr Groser says once the deal is signed, Parliament and the public can review it and make submissions. Great! It won't take effect without legislation. Good.
