John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press

Many people in the Anglo world and now Europe may ask where does the current transnational white nativist or white nationalist ideology, promoting eugenics and immigration restrictions, come from?

Many would suggest that the fulcrum of ideology or ideas has been the ‘most influential unknown man in America’ (New York Times) John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton, along with his network of anti-immigrant organisations informing the White House, also the Social Contract Press which Tanton was central in founding, and his influence also bisecting the Koch influenced ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council.

In earlier days Tanton along with Paul Ehrlich, with support from Rockefeller Bros., Ford and Carnegie Foundations, founded ZPG Zero Population Growth in the US (according to the Washington Post 1977) then later in Australia and UK; becoming Sustainable Population Australia while in the U.K., Population Matters and Migration Watch.

The Social Contract Press has been described by Southern Poverty Legal Center (SPLC) as:

‘The Social Contract Press (TSCP) routinely publishes race-baiting articles penned by white nationalists. The press is a program of U.S. Inc, the foundation created by John Tanton, the racist founder and principal ideologue of the modern nativist movement. TSCP puts an academic veneer of legitimacy over what are essentially racist arguments about the inferiority of today’s immigrants.’

SPLC also describes John Tanton as:

‘John Tanton was the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement. He created a network of organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA – that profoundly shaped the immigration debate in the U.S.’

Tanton, his network and associated people, including Dr. Robert ‘Bob’ Birrell and Dr. Katherine Betts (whom interviewed Jean Raspail author of Steve Bannon’s favourite tract ‘Camp of the Saints’) have been influential in informing Australia’s immigration policy, post White Australia policy.  Further, TSCP also have a representative via John Tanton in Australia, Denis McCormack who explains below in a TSCP article.

From The Social Contract Press:

‘Fond Memories of John Tanton: The ‘Grand Master of Life’

By Denis McCormack Volume 30, Number 1 (Fall 2019)

Issue theme: “John Tanton: His Life and Legacy (1934-2019)”

While transiting an Australian airport in early 1990, not long before our Federal Election, Dr. John Tanton picked up a discarded newspaper left on a nearby transit lounge seat. Inside the paper John spotted a brief news item in The Age (a prominent newspaper), written by the late Pamela Bone, a “respected” feature and op/ed writer of long standing. Her work often reflected her firmly held support for high levels of immigration and welcoming more “refugees.” She was a classic Social Justice Warrior (SJW)…..

……From the airport, John posted a quick note to Bone, enclosing his contact details, and asking her to pass them along to me. This she eventually did. I soon wrote to John, thanking him for his interest, and enclosed some AAFI materials. By return mail I received a large package full of TSC, FAIR, CIS, and ZPG publications. John invited me to keep him informed about our doings Down Under and to tell him what we tried to popularize resistance to high levels of immigration-fueled population growth.

In 1992, John invited me to attend the annual Writers’ Workshop (WW), which was held in San Diego, California that year. I have attended eight of these in-gatherings for like minds. On the morning of my trip to San Diego, I met Dr. Tanton and Professor Garrett Hardin having breakfast, and asked them, straight off the bat, if they had ever read The Camp of the Saints. “YES” they both responded, and we three brothers in arms discussed this essential book in our common cause…..

…….Prolific reader that he was, John had read All for Australia (Methuen Haynes, 1984) by Australia’s pre-eminent historian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, whom I knew and was able to introduce to him. John was later interviewed by Terry Lane, a well-respected long-term ABC-Melbourne presenter. Lane was unafraid to call for reducing immigration, and was a critic of the multiculturalism policy mania. This made his interview with John easy to enjoy.

In 1992 John invited me to serve as The Social Contract’s Australian correspondent, and am happy to remain so today.’

For more blogs and articles about Australian politics, demography, immigration, population growth, populist politics and white nationalism click through.

Buy Local – Not Global – Issues of Nationalist Trade Policies

Many people including voters are encouraged to think that exports and self sufficiency are good, while imports are bad.  Many economies have degrees of protection for supposed societal or national benefit but closed economies and tariffs although good for some companies or a sector, are not good for local industry nor consumers.

 

With the rise of Trump we have witnessed trashing of trade agreements, attacks on trade blocs or regions e.g. the EU European Union, WTO and claiming GOP policies protect workers’ jobs.

 

In fact it seems more of a libertarian trap appealing to voter sentiments and beliefs but bypassing rational analysis and allowing rentier class or dominant corporate entities to take policy advantage, behind political power, how?

 

The libertarian right has been successful both economically and socially in claiming autarkist or closed national socialist economies as good for the environment and workers, back grounded by simultaneous attacks on immigrants, imports, globalisation and trade agreements.

 

In fact the early ‘70s Club of Rome (sponsored and hosted by corporate oligarchs) promoted the ‘Limits to Growth’ theory (or PR construct) which was then applied socially to population and immigration by ZPG (also sponsored by corporates) Zero Population Growth’s Paul ‘population bomb’ Ehrlich and John ‘white nationalist’ and ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton, viewing any growth as bad, especially non WASP humanity.

 

Further, Herman Daly applied the same ‘limits to growth’ to his autarkist ‘Steady-state economy’ theory which also presented antipathy towards the ‘other’ and anything new by dismissing the need for free trade agreements, trade blocs, globalisation, migration, economic growth etc.  predicated on simply constant capital and people; similar was promoted during Brexit, by Trump and used to persuade the left or unions.

 

A more vivid example, has been demands in the Anglo world to do less trade with PRC or China, driven by US corporate lobbyists and the right, whose clients see their influence waning and China rising.

 

Why a ‘libertarian trap’?  Because those corporates who support the promotion of such theories and implementation would benefit from already existing global infrastructure, influence in national politics, shaping of opinions, then being outside of trade regulations and standards while precluding new competitive threats.

 

The following article from Inside Story looks into the disadvantages of trying to closely manage the balance of a national economy, with more losers than winners.  This has been back grounded by US trade tensions with China and Australia supporting the US with claims that Australia is too dependent upon trade with China (not true), therefore must decrease its dependency, and then find new markets to replace China…..

 

The trouble with “buying Australian”

 

Adam Triggs – 10 AUGUST 2020

 

The campaign risks reducing our living standards and hurting poorer Australians the most.

 

‘Buy Australian’ has been the catch cry from many in politics, business, trade unions and industry bodies for as long as I can remember, and Covid-19 has upped the ante. But while many groups advocate Buy Australian, one group is conspicuously absent: economists. The reason for this is counterintuitive: Buy Australian doesn’t help Australians, it hurts them, and particularly the most disadvantaged.

 

To understand why, consider that Australia, like any country, has scarce resources — workers, capital, energy, materials — with which it can produce goods and services. Since producing more goods and services in one area at any point in time means producing less in another area, the question is: what should we produce?

 

Without trade, the answer is easy: everything. Without trade, anything we want to consume we must produce ourselves. This means we have to make the things we are really good at making compared with the rest of the world, such as agriculture, mining and education, as well as the things we aren’t very good at making, like airplanes, defence equipment and LCD TVs.

 

This is not ideal. Luckily, trade offers an alternative. Trade allows Australia to focus its resources on making the things that it is good at making (and earn an extraordinary $400 billion each year on international markets in the process — more than a fifth of our GDP) and then import the rest. This is the whole point of trade: it is about specialisation. When trade is properly understood to be about specialisation, it becomes clear that imports are just as important as exports.

 

This is the problem with Buy Australian. If we decide to stop importing a particular product, then we have to start making that product (or, at least, more of it). If we have to make that product ourselves, it means we have to divert labour, capital, energy and materials from producing the things we are good at making (and that earn us a lot of money overseas) so that we can make more of the things we are bad at making (and that earn us barely anything overseas). This is a recipe for a poorer, less productive Australia. It means lower living standards for Australians.

 

For proof, look no further than the land of the free and the home of the brave. Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel imposed a government-mandated “Buy American” policy that made foreign-made steel much more expensive than domestic-made steel. This was fantastic news for America’s steel mills. They saw an increase in production, an increase in employment and an increase in the prices of the steel they sell.

 

But, sadly, there are no free lunches in economics. The benefit to those in the steel mills came at the cost of their sisters and brothers in their neighbouring industries. American industries that use steel to make cars, whitegoods and building materials saw the cost of their inputs skyrocket. They begged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, but with no success. Many had to lay off workers. Some closed up shop.

 

The result of Trump’s policy was textbook economics: the Buy American tariffs meant the United States was now producing more of the stuff it is bad at making and producing less of the stuff it is good at making. America was left poorer, with higher unemployment and more government debt as a result….

 

…..So why is Buy Australian so popular? There are two main reasons. One reason is that Buy Australian sounds like a good idea. It’s intuitive. Exports sound good. Imports don’t. But when we understand that trade is not about “opening markets” and “boosting exports” — the rhetoric we normally hear from politicians that implies (suspiciously) that there are no losers from trade (a free lunch) — and is in fact about specialisation, suddenly Buy Australian doesn’t make much sense.

 

The second reason is that there is a big difference between the incentives of the individual and the incentives of society. It is perfectly rational for individual businesses or industries to advocate Buy Australian when it comes to the products they produce, since they get all the benefits while their neighbours suffer the costs. It made perfect sense for US steel mills to stand in the Oval Office and applaud Trump’s tariffs, just as it makes sense for individual Australian industries and firms to advocate Buy Australian….

 

….The risk is that Covid-19 encourages policymakers to institutionalise Buy Australian policies through tariffs, quotas or the onshoring of supply chains. This is a recipe for a less prosperous Australia and a slower recovery from Covid-19, the overwhelming burden of which will fall on poorer Australians. As the old proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So is the road to a prolonged Australian recession. 

 

For more blogs and article about the Asian century, Australian politics, climate change, economics, environment, EU European Union, GDP Growth, global trade, libertarian economics, limits to growth, political strategy, populist politics and WTO.

 

UNPD Global Population Growth Forecasts Debunked

For generations and especially the past decades the Anglo world along with UN Population Division, ZPG Zero Population Growth, Club of Rome, FAIR/CIS, Population Matters UK and Sustainable Population Australia, have highlighted and stressed population growth as the issue of the times, even to the point of describing it as ‘exponential’.  However, the movement has too many links with the eugenics movement or white nationalism and misrepresents research and data e.g. claiming overly high fertility rates, focusing upon now and ignoring future (lower) forecasts based on good analysis.

 

The following articles touch on how The Lancet has debunked the UN Population Division’s alarmism on fertility rates and global population, then followed with Abul Rizvi comparing the impacts of population, low fertility and immigration on Australia, with Japan.

 

‘World population growth set to fall by 2100, as new dominant powers emerge

 

• An international study in The Lancet predicted a world population of 8.8 billion by the end of the century as fertility rates decline
• China’s population is expected to fall to 780 million. Geopolitical power will shift to China, India, Nigeria and the United States

 

Earth will be home to 8.8 billion souls in 2100, 2 billion fewer than current UN projections, according to a major study published on Wednesday that foresees new global power alignments shaped by declining fertility rates and greying populations.

 

By century’s end, 183 of 195 countries – barring an influx of immigrants – will have fallen below the replacement threshold needed to maintain population levels, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.

 

More than 20 countries – including Japan, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Portugal, South Korea and Poland – will see their numbers diminish by at least half.

 

China’s will fall nearly that much, from 1.4 billion people today to 730 million in 80 years.

 

Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, will triple in size to some 3 billion people, with Nigeria alone expanding to almost 800 million in 2100, second only to India’s 1.1 billion.

 

“These forecasts suggest good news for the environment, with less stress on food production systems and lower carbon emissions, as well as significant economic opportunity for parts of Sub-Saharan Africa,” said lead author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

 

“However, most countries outside of Africa will see shrinking workforces and inverting population pyramids, which will have profound negative consequences for the economy.”

 

‘Population ageing in Australia and Japan

 

Abul Rizvi 19 June 2020

 

Australia and Japan are demographic polar opposites.

 

While Australia boosted immigration to slow its rate of ageing from around the Year 2000, Japan maintained very low levels of immigration. Combined with lower fertility, low immigration has led to Japan ageing quickly. Its working age to population (WAP) ratio has fallen almost 10 percentage points since this peaked around 1990. Australia’s WAP ratio over the same period declined only marginally (see Chart 1).

 

Japan’s working age population fell by 10.5 million between 1990 and 2018 while Australia’s working age population increased 4.9 million.

 

The last available estimate of the portion of foreign born in Japan was 1.02% in 2001, one of the lowest in the developed world. That compared to Australia at 23.0% in 2001 and 29.6% in 2019, one of the highest in the developed world.

 

The median age in Japan in 2017 had increased to 46.7, one of the highest in the developed world, compared to Australia’s 37.5, one of the lowest in the developed world.

 

In 1990, the 65+ population in Japan was 12.1% while Australia’s was 11.1%, a difference of 2%. By 2018, Japan’s 65+ population had increased to 28.1% while Australia’s was 15.7%, a staggering difference of 12.4%.

 

While there are many factors impacting different economies, the extent of demographic difference between Japan and Australia will tend to highlight any differential impact from population ageing.

 

Japan entered its demographic burden phase (ie WAP ratio in decline) almost two decades earlier than Australia which entered its demographic burden phase from 2009. All things equal, Australia’s economy should have performed more strongly than Japan’s from 1990 onwards. As Australia has aged much less since 2009, it should have maintained that advantage, including in per capita terms….

 

……The pressure for Japan to get its immigration settings right will continue to grow as its rate of ageing again accelerates after 2030 and its rate of population decline continues accelerating.

 

While Australia moved early to use immigration to slow the rate of ageing, Japan is moving very late – perhaps too late to prevent a rapid decline in living standards associated with resumption of rapid ageing and decline.

 

But Australia will also now age rapidly over the next 10-20 years with the likelihood of further decline in its fertility rate as well as lower net overseas migration under current policy settings after international borders are opened. This is projected at almost 100,000 per annum less than forecast in the 2019 Budget.’

 

For more articles and blogs about Australian politics, demography, immigration, NOM net overseas migration, population growth, populist politics and white nationalism click through.

 

NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth

Population, Immigration and Net Overseas Migration NOM

Interesting article on immigration and NOM net overseas migration by former Australian Department of Immigration Deputy Secretary Abul Rizvi endeavouring to insert some understanding and clarity round the ‘immigration’ debate when most misunderstand, misinterpret or misrepresent immigration and population data.

 

Australian Population Growth and the NOM Net Overseas Migration (Image copyright Home Affairs/ABS, 2013)

 

This is manifested in media, political and public narratives that focus upon the NOM and the false notion that it is both unusually high and can be micromanaged; underpinned by lack of detail or ‘solution’ to lowering the NOM (without assessment of broader societal impacts).

 

‘NATIONAL AFFAIRS: Putting the numbers back into the immigration debate

ABUL RIZVI 20 FEBRUARY 2018

Drastically reducing net migration would be neither easy nor wise, says a former senior official.

How governments manage migration is a big deal. A perception of too many arrivals drove the Brexit result in Britain, helped define the Trump presidency, and fuelled the rising populist vote in Europe. Japan’s ageing population is driving its government to increase immigration — but ever so cautiously, recognising the likely backlash from its largely homogeneous population. And the same demographic forces have driven China to try to attract back part of its huge diaspora.

Yet, despite our long immigration tradition, Australia’s immigration debate is tortured and surprisingly poorly informed. Until very recently, this was not helped by the Turnbull government’s eerie silence on immigration levels and population policy. Immigration minister Peter Dutton’s tentative foray late last week should therefore be welcomed.

Given the complexities, immigration ministers have an obligation to be accurate with the data and honest about the range of issues to be considered in significantly reducing the intake. Dutton was neither.’

 

Issues and Critique of Net Overseas Migration Statistics and Data

 

The NOM is a measure of movements, not designed as an ‘immigration’ target but merely measures numbers of people (irrespective of nationality, visa status and includes Australians) who enter Australia with the intention of remaining longer than 12/16+ months (ABS, 2017).

Rizvi cites several variables or inputs that would be required to control or lower the NOM.  This would include restricting rights of Australians marrying foreigners, restricting numbers of international students, preclude second year visas for working holiday makers doing agricultural work, close the refugee program, limit New Zealanders and seek out overstayers.

Other issues or features neither understood nor highlighted:

1. Few nations use the same NOM as a measure to estimate resident population apart from Australia, UK and NZ then e.g. in the EU Schengen Zone it’s impossible due to free movement and that most nations appear to estimate from e.g. residency registration or census data (UN, 2015).
2. Rizvi also fails to mention the cumulative statistical impact of an ageing population of citizens and permanent residents (includes significant numbers of British subjects) who were already in country 2006 when line was drawn in the sand on population; many have neither departed nor returned to Australia long term and have two impacts upon the data (and census). First is longevity due to better health hence staying in the data longer (though invisible) being attributed to ‘immigration’.  However, this will change when the baby boomer demographic starts departing this earth in the medium long term in about five years onwards i.e. deaths will outnumber births for long term thus impacting the estimated resident population significantly.  This is also set against already declining fertility rates and global population ex. Sub Saharan Africa, expected to peak by mid-century as explained by development, medical and statistics expert Professor Hans Rosling (Gapminder, 2013).
3. A significant financial reason for encouraging temporary residents with no likelihood of permanent residency outcomes, whether students, backpackers etc., is as net financial contributors paying taxes without future access to state services. In other words, they support or subsidise increasing numbers of retirees needing pensions, health care etc. dependent upon healthy state budgets (with decreasing dependency ratio of workforce tax payer numbers to retirees).
4. Further, statistical analysis has found that not only is the NOM very confusing, it may over estimate Australia’s population significantly, through double counting those not in country but not outside for more than 12/16+ months:

‘Except on migration. On this single metric, it’s as if the entire world converges into a deafeningly silent consensus. Population! At last a hard number. Something tangible, physical, consistent. The cacophony of economic debate subsides as everyone gather’s around to pay homage at the altar of the purest, simplest driver of demand, production, and everything else. The one undisputed back-stop to debate…Trying to find a simple and defensible explanation of a complex issue isn’t easy. But for migration, I think there is one. I’ll describe it here in prose, and in a later post gather some of the graphs and data that support it. There has been a level shift. But it hasn’t been in ‘migration’, as everyone actually intends and understands the word. The shift that we should be talking about has been in mobility.’ (Quixotic Quant, 2017a).

 

‘The alternative story is that sometime in the mid-2000s the Australian Bureau of Statistics changed the definition of an official statistic called “Net Overseas Migration”. The arbitrary definition they had at the time was malfunctioning, and the next arbitrary one they changed to has been malfunctioning even worse. A blithely ignorant press didn’t even notice the change, let alone query the disfunction that inspired it, so the entire country has been putting their faith soaring population figure that has the integrity of custard. The harder alternative figure shows that our migration rate is actually flat’ (Quixotic Quant, 2017b).

 

5. By using ‘Migration’ in NOM to describe the definition may simply be a linguistic coincidence, however, it is highly suggestive of a direct correlation with permanent immigration and long-term population growth, which does not exist (except by some indirect correlation set amongst other factors).
6. The local and global NGOs, think tanks, institutes, commentators, ‘ecologists’, media and politicians who constantly highlight supposed negative aspects of immigration and ‘sustainable’ population growth have been influenced or manipulated by the US white nativist movement, with the latter being influential amongst Republican Party and Trump (SPLC, 2001) in turn influenced by Darwin’s cousin Galton’s ‘science of eugenics and racial hygiene’ (Das, 2015).
7. Post WWII prior to the formation of the UN Population Council the Rockefeller Foundation (Standard Oil/Exxon Mobil) co-opted the American Eugenics Society (AES) which had become discredited by the Nazis and their ‘research’ at The Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in Germany, to then form the UN Population Council (Kurbegovic, 2005 & Novielli, 2017).
8. Also, to emerge with support of same and similar oligarchs’ (fossil fuels and auto) foundations were Zero Population Growth (ZPG) (Bentley Historical Library – University of Michigan, 2018), Zero Economic Growth (ZEG) (Daly, 1980) and the Club of Rome ‘limits to growth’, etc. constructs (Green Agenda, 2018) to popularise negative perceptions of population growth and immigration as ‘liberal and environmental’ concerns (Stern, 2005).
9. Demographically it is now coming to a head for many whether middle Europe or the ‘Anglosphere’ with the refrain, ‘brown people, Moslems etc. are going to outnumber white people or WASPs leading to demographic suicide….’.

 

Reference List:

 

ABS – Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) 3412.0 – Migration, Australia, 2015-16 Available at: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/exnote/3412.0 (Accessed on: 25 February 2018).

Bentley Historical Library – University of Michigan (2018) John Tanton Papers: 1960-2007. Available at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-861056?byte=53770321;focusrgn=bioghist;subview=standard;view=reslist (Accessed on: 27 February 2018).

Daly, H. (1980) Why the Industrial World Needs Zero Economic Growth (Recording). Available at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34007423?selectedversion=NBD22971101 (Accessed on 27 February 2018).

Das, S. (2015) Francis Galton and the History of Eugenics at UCL.  Available at: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2015/10/22/francis-galton-and-the-history-of-eugenics-at-ucl/

Gapminder (2013) Don’t Panic – The Facts About Population. Available at: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/ (Accessed on: 25 February 2018).

Green Agenda (2018) The First Global Revolution. Available at: http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html (Accessed on: 27 February 2018).

Kurbegovic, C. (2013). Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A). Available at: http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/5233cdc25c2ec500000 Accessed on 25 February 2018).

Novielli, C. (2017) The Population Council has a shocking 65-year history, and it’s nothing to celebrate. Available at: https://www.liveaction.org/news/population-council-founded-eugenicists-promoting-abortion-turns-65/ (Accessed on: 25 February 2018).

Quixotic Quant (2017a) The state of debate: A bird’s-eye on migration. Available at: https://www.quixoticquant.com/post/the-state-of-debate-a-bird-s-eye-on-migration/  (Accessed on: 27 January 2018).

Quixotic Quant (2017b) The Missing Million: Is Australia’s migration rate actually high? Available at: https://www.quixoticquant.com/post/the-missing-million/ (Accessed on: 27 January 2018).

SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center (2010) Anti-Immigration Groups. Available at: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/anti-immigration-groups (Accessed on 25 February 2018).

Stern, M. (2005) Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. California: University of California Press.

UN – United Nations – Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2015) International Migration Flows to and From Selected Countries: The 2015 Revision. Available at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/empirical2/docs/migflows2015documentation.pdf (Accessed on: 25 February 2018).