The ads they used to run with the WWII analogies were the most offensive thing I’ve seen on TV.

Indeed, and of course I would prefer not to focus on the idea of moral judgments too much – apart from making them transparent.

There is definitely an information issue, where people may not realise that trade could make us better off – and that is another important thing to educate people about.

However, during times like a global financial crisis we may face a short term trade-off in terms of work – and people have shown that they would be willing to significantly lower the living standards of people overseas in order to get some short term gain for people that happen to be born in NZ.

They can feel like this if they want to – but god dang it, the moral judgment they are making has to be transparent!

I agree that it is worth pointing out the immorality implicit in some policies and statements. However, is the problem here actually that people have a mistaken concept of employment as a zero-sum game or is it just that the vast majority of people are xenophobes? If it is the latter then what is pointed out in the article won’t seem immoral to them.

YEOW!

You are 100% right, 100%.

But, that doesn’t mean that illustrating the biases associated with this behaviour, and showing how they can be seen as morally inappropriate, has significant value.

After all, this is exactly what economists did with slavery.

Boom!

Agreed, ick.