The Zika Virus And Politicized Science

The Zika Virus And Politicized Science

Peter Schwartz, Distinguished Fellow, Ann Rand Institute.

Published by The Huffington Post.  August 22, 2016

Science today is regularly distorted to serve other ends. The religious right, for instance, claims that "creationism" should be taught in public schools as a scientific alternative to the theory of evolution. The environmentalist left, for instance, claims science reveals genetically modified foods to be harmful to one's health. Both groups subordinate the facts of science to other considerations, whether Biblical or logical.

The same dishonesty is shaping the response to the Zika.

The Zika threat is causing great concern at the Rio Olympics, with some athletes having chosen to avoid the Games altogether rather than risk infection. Florida recently reported the first locally contracted cases of Zika in the United States. And the Centers for Disease Control is advising pregnant women to travel to certain I areas of Miami—the first time the agency has ever issued such a warning for the I continental U.S.

But among the measures is notably absent the use of DOT.

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, and DOT has been highly effective in eliminating mosquito-borne diseases. India, for example, had 75 million malaria cases in 1953, but only 50,000 by 1961, after DOT had been introduced. In Sri Lanka close to 3 million cases of malaria occurred in 1948; 15 years later, owing to DOT, the number dropped to 17. The National Academy of Sciences stated in 1970: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DOT... It is estimated J that in little more than two decades DOT has prevented 500 million deaths due to

But strong opposition to DOT arose, spurred by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Environmentalists got DOT banned in the U.S. and, eventually, in dozens of other countries. Western nations, which fund anti-malaria J campaigns throughout the world, largely refused to underwrite any efforts that I employed DOT As a result, DOT use shrank—and malaria surged.

In India the number of cases increased to 30 million in 1977. In Sri Lanka the number went to 2.5 million in 1969. More recently, other forms of malaria control—such as installing bed-netting and reducing the presence of standing water—have lowered the incidence of the disease worldwide. But they are generally less effective than DOT. In South Africa, for example, after DOT spraying was halted in 1996, malaria infections rose from under 5,000 in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000. At which point DOT was reproduced—and six months later the number dropped by half.

This hostility to DOT was not based on science. For instance, DOT was said to be carcinogenic, because of studies in which mice developed liver tumors—but only after receiving doses of DOT 100,000 times higher than what a person would typically absorb (source.) Further, the opponents of DOT ignored many facts contradicting their views—such as the fact that during the period of highest DOT use (1944-1972), deaths from liver cancer fell by 30 percent (source)—or that workers who regularly handled DOT were found to have no higher rates of cancer than the general population (source)—or that people who voluntarily ingested DOT daily for up to two years suffered no ill effects (source)—or that the amount of DOT (per kilogram of body weight) required to kill mice is greater than that of aspirin.

What, then, was the motive behind the anti-DDT crusade? It was based on the premise that the man-made is inherently suspect—that the natural is good and the non-natural is bad, that human "intervention" in nature is deleterious and that we have to protect nature from man, not for man. The millions of lives saved by our "non-organic" use of DOT—and the millions lost when it was not used—were disregarded. Instead, the thinning of the eggshells of the bald eagle was presented as an intolerable effect of DOT.

As explained by David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service, environmentalists:

.. value wilderness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind.. .. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, o, free-flowing river or ecosystem to mankind. They have intrinsic value, mi value—to me—than another human body or a billion of them.

True, there is evidence that some mosquitoes are developing resistance to DOT. But even where DDT's toxicity has been diminished, its repellent properties still work. When house walls are sprayed with DOT, even resistant mosquitoes are repulsed and don't enter. More important, though, one's attitude should be: 'If DDT's effectiveness is lessening, let's find some way to make it work better." Instead, the operating premise seems to be: "Man-made chemicals interfere with nature, so let's find some way to prohibit them."

Man survives and prospers, not by living "in harmony" with nature, but by reshaping it—by creating houses and roads and factories out of the wilderness, by transforming nature into a tool that serves human purposes. The problem with environmentalists is not that they have an ideology, but that it is an ideology with an inverted standard of value. It is an ideology that regards the very means of human flourishing as destructive. In assessing DOT, therefore, if your overriding concern is to restructure nature in order to promote man's well-being, then you will focus on whether DOT does in fact save human lives. If, however, your overriding concern is to preserve nature against human encroachment, then you will focus on the "evil" of injecting chemicals into nature's domain. And you will be drawn to any arbitrary claim about adverse consequences of those chemicals.

My primary aim here is not to argue for the use of DOT, but to underscore the need

for objectivity is dealing with such issues. We should not uncritically accept the assertions of those who are hostile to technology and industrialization. We should not accept any allegations of some product's harmfulness—say, that DOT causes Alzheimer's, or that vaccines cause autism or that tracking causes earthquakes —without being certain they rest on genuine, unpoliticized science.

Follow Peter Schwartz on Twitter www.twitter.corn/PSchwartzlDS

Brian Cox confused on more than global temperatures

Brian Cox confused on more than global temperatures

Jennifer Marohasy
On Line Opinion 18th August, 2016

(NOTE: I don't consider myself to be a climate change skeptic: the evidence points to between 40% and 70% of the last 200 years of global warming to be anthropogenic, caused by the burning of fossil fuels which put more CO2 into the atmosphere. However, this article is thought-provoking and, if true (even if only partly true), deserves to influence your opinion on the issue of global climate change.)

Celebrity physicist Brian Cox misled the ABC TV Q&A audience on at least 3 points-of-fact on Monday night. This is typical of the direction that much of science is taking. Richard Horton, the current editor of the medical journal, The Lancet, recently stated that, "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."

Firstly, Cox displayed an out-of-date NASA chart of remodelled global temperatures as proof that we have catastrophic climate change caused by industrial pollution. Another panellist on the program, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, tried to raise the issue of cause and effect: querying whether there really was a link between rising temperature and carbon dioxide. This is generally accepted without question. But interestingly - beyond experiments undertaken by a chemist over 100 years ago - there is no real proof beyond unreliable computer simulation models.

Indeed, in 2006, John Nicol (a former Dean of Science at James Cook University) wrote to Penny Whetton (then meteorologist-in-charge of the climate science stream at CSIRO) asking if she could provide him with copies notes, internal reports, references ("peer reviewed" of course) which would provide details of the physics behind the hypothesis of global warming. She wrote back immediately promising to find some - which he thought was odd since he had assumed her office was stacked-to-the-ceiling with such literature.

Whetton even went to the trouble of contacting other colleagues - one of whom sent Nicol an inconsequential article in a Polish journal. After eighteen months of their exchanging letters and all of her promises to be helpful, all she could finally offer was the "scientific" section of "Climate Change in Australia 2007". There, to Nicol's amazement he found nothing apart from the oft quoted: "We believe that most of the increase in global temperatures during the second half of the 20th century was very likely due to increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide".

"Believe", "most", and "very likely" are jargon, perhaps meaning "we don't have a clue".

The chart Cox held up on Monday night - now all-over-the-internet as proof of global warming - essentially represents a remodelling of observed temperature measurements to confirm a belief, that we most likely have catastrophic global warming.

The accurate UAH satellite record shows a spike in temperatures in 1997-1998 associated with the El Nino back then, followed by a long pause of about 17 years, before the recent spike at the end of 2015-beginning of 2016. The recent spike was also caused by an El Nino event. Global-temperatures have been plummeting since March, and are now almost back to pause-levels. Indeed, Roberts was more correct than Cox, when he claimed there had been no warming for about 21 years - despite the rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

The second misleading statement from Cox on Monday night concerned the nature of the modern sceptic - often harshly labelled a denier. Cox suggested that sceptics were the type of people that would even deny the moon-landing. In making this claim he was no doubt alluding to research, since discredited, funded by the Australian Research Council, that attempted to draw a link between scepticism of anthropogenic global warming and believing in conspiracies.

In fact, astronaut Harrison Schmitt - who actually stood on the moon, drilled holes, collected moon rocks, and has since returned to Earth - is a well-known sceptic of anthropogenic global warming. In short, Astronaut Harrison knows the moon-landing was real, but does not believe carbon dioxide plays a significant role in causing weather and climate change. In fact, Schmitt has expressed the view - a very similar view to Roberts - that the risks posed by climate change are overrated. Harrison has even suggested that climate change is a tool for people who are trying to increase the size of government - though he does not deny that he has been to the moon and back.

Thirdly, Cox has qualifications in particle physics, yet he incorrectly stated that Albert Einstein devised the four-dimensional-space-time continuum. Those with a particular interest in the history of relativity theory know that while Einstein reproduced the Lorenz equations using a different philosophical interpretation, he was not the first to put these equations into the context of the 4-dimensional continuum - that was done by Hermann Minkowski. Minkowski reformulated in four dimensions the then-recent theory of special relativity concluding that time and space should be treated equally. This subsequently gave rise to the concept of events taking place in a unified four-dimensional space-time continuum.

Then again, Cox may not care too much for facts. He is not only a celebrity scientist, but also a rock star. Just the other day I was watching a YouTube video of him playing keyboard as the lead-singer of the band screamed, "We don't need a reason".

There was once a clear distinction between science - that was about reason and evidence - and art that could venture into the make-believe including through the re-interpretation of facts. This line is increasingly blurred in climate science where data is now routinely remodeled to make it more consistent with global warming theory.

For example, I'm currently working on a 61-page expose of the situation at Rutherglen. Since November 1912, air temperatures have been measured at an agricultural research station near Rutherglen in northern Victoria, Australia. The data is of high quality, therefore, there is no scientific reason to apply adjustments in order to calculate temperature trends and extremes. Mean annual temperatures oscillate between 15.8°C and 13.4°C. The hottest years are 1914 and 2007; there is no overall warming-trend. The hottest summer was in 1938-1939 when Victoria experienced the Black Friday bushfire disaster. This 1938-39 summer was 3°C hotter than the average-maximum summer temperature at Rutherglen for the entire period: December 1912 to February 2016. Minimum annual temperatures also show significant inter-annual variability.

In short, this temperature data, like most of the temperature series from the 112 sites used to concoct the historical temperature record by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology does not accord with global warming theory.

So, adjustments are made by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to these temperature series before they are incorporated into the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network - Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT); and also the UK Met Office's HadCRUT dataset, which informs IPCC deliberations.

The temperature spike in 1938-1939 is erroneously identified as a statistical error, and all temperatures before 1938 adjusted down by 0.62°C. The most significant change is to the temperature minima with all temperatures before 1974, and 1966, adjusted-down by 0.61°C and 0.72°C, respectively. For the year 1913, there is a 1.3°C difference between the annual raw minimum value as measured at Rutherglen and the remodelled value.

The net effect of the remodelling is to create statistically significant warming of 0.7 °C in the ACORN-SAT mean temperature series for Rutherglen, in general agreement with anthropogenic global warming theory.

NASA applies a very similar technique to the thousands of stations used to reproduce the chart that Cox held-up on Monday night during the Q&A program. I discussed these change back in 2014 with Gavin Schmidt, who oversees the production of these charts at NASA. I was specifically complaining about how they remodel the data for Amberley, a military base near where I live in Queensland.

Back in 2014, the un-adjusted mean annual maximum temperatures for Amberley - since recordings were first made in 1941 - show temperatures trending up from a low of about 25.5°Cin 1950 to a peak of almost 28.5°Cin 2002. The minimum temperature series for Amberley showed cooling from about 1970. Of course this does not accord with anthropogenic global warming theory. To quote Karl Braganza from the Bureau as published by online magazine The Conversation, "Patterns of temperature change that are uniquely associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect, and which have been observed in the real world include... Greater warming in winter compared with summer... Greater warming of night time temperatures than daytime temperatures".

The Bureau has "corrected" this inconvenient truth at Amberley by jumping-up the minimum temperatures twice through the homogenization process: once around 1980 and then around 1996 to achieve a combined temperature increase of over 1.5°C.

This is obviously a very large step-change, remembering that the entire temperature increase associated with global warming over the 20th century is generally considered to be in the order of 0.9°C.

According to various peer-reviewed papers, and technical reports, homogenization as practiced in climate science is a technique that enables non-climatic factors to be eliminated from temperature series - by making various adjustments.

It is often done when there is a site change (for example from a post office to an airport), or equipment change (from a Glaisher Stand to a Stevenson screen). But at Amberley neither of these criteria can be applied. The temperatures have been recorded at the same well-maintained site within the perimeter of the air force base since 1941. Through the homogenization process the Bureau have changed what was a cooling trend in the minimum temperature of 1.0°Cper century, into a warming trend of 2.5°C per century.

Homogenization - the temperature adjusting done by the Bureau - has not resulted in some small change to the temperatures as measured at Amberley, but rather a change in the temperature trend from one of cooling to dramatic warming as was done to the series for Rutherglen.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) based in New York also applies a jump-up to the Amberley series in 1980, and makes other changes, so that the annual average temperature for Amberley increases from 1941 to 2012 by about 2°C.

The new Director of GISS, Gavin Schmidt, explained to me on Twitter back in 2014 that: "@jennmarohasy There is an inhomogenity detected (~1980) and based on continuity w/nearby stations it is corrected. #notrocketscience".

When I sought clarification regarding what was meant by "nearby" stations I was provided with a link to a list of 310 localities used by climate scientists at Berkeley when homogenizing the Amberley data.

The inclusion of Berkeley scientists was perhaps to make the point that all the key institutions working on temperature series (the Australian Bureau, NASA, and also scientists at Berkeley) appreciated the need to adjust-up the temperatures at Amberley. So, rock star scientists can claim an absolute consensus?

But these 310 "nearby" stations, they stretch to a radius of 974 kilometres and include Frederick Reef in the Coral Sea, Quilpie post office and even Bourke post office. Considering the un-adjusted data for the six nearest stations with long and continuous records (old Brisbane aero, Cape Moreton Lighthouse, Gayndah post office, Bundaberg post office, Miles post office and Yamba pilot station) the Bureau's jump-up for Amberley creates an increase for the official temperature trend of 0.75°C per century.

Temperatures at old Brisbane aero, the closest of these station, also shows a long-term cooling trend. Indeed perhaps the cooling at Amberley is real. Why not consider this, particularly in the absence of real physical evidence to the contrary? In the Twitter conversation with Schmidt I suggested it was nonsense to use temperature data from radically different climatic zones to homogenize Amberley, and repeated my original question asking why it was necessary to change the original temperature record in the first place. Schmidt replied, "@jennmarohasy Your question is ill-posed. No-one changed the trend directly. Instead procedures correct for a detected jump around ~1980."

If Twitter was around at the time George Orwell was writing the dystopian fiction Nineteen Eighty-Four, I wonder whether he might have borrowed some text from Schmidt's tweets, particularly when words like, "procedures correct" refer to mathematical algorithms reaching out to "nearby" locations that are across the Coral Sea and beyond the Great Dividing Range to change what was a mild cooling-trend, into dramatic warming, for an otherwise perfectly politically-incorrect temperature series.

Horton, the somewhat disillusioned editor of The Lancet, also stated recently that science is, "Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness." I would not go that far! I am not sure it has taken a turn for darkness - perhaps just a turn towards the make-believe. Much of climate science, in particular, is now underpinned with a postmodernist epistemology - it is simply suspicious of reason and has an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining particular power-structures including through the homogenisation of historical temperature data.

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

What you need to know about GMOs

Joel Achenbach June 30, 2016

The Washington Post

While Greenpeace and other organizations oppose genetically engineered food, more than 100 Nobel laureates are taking a stand on the side of GMOs. Here's a look at each side's arguments. 

More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter states.

The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website, supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington.

“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts told The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."

Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would "admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well."

Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. [Update: Greenpeace responded early Thursday -- see statement below.]  It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice.

The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates.

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”

The letter states:

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world.  Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk.  VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety.

Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms.

Greenpeace International's website states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of "genetic pollution." The site states: "Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way."

Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding. Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country have been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics.

Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled "Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises."

This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn't new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down.

But Columbia University's Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue. "Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I’m not so sure we’re any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out."

Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research.

Update: Here is Greenpeace's response, datelined Manila, June 30, from Wilhelmina Pelegrina, Campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia:

“Accusations that anyone is blocking genetically engineered ‘Golden’ rice are false. ‘Golden’ rice has failed as a solution and isn’t currently available for sale, even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn’t even exist.

“Corporations are overhyping ‘Golden’ Rice to pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops. This costly experiment has failed to produce results for the last 20 years and diverted attention from methods that already work. Rather than invest in this overpriced public relations exercise, we need to address malnutrition through a more diverse diet, equitable access to food and eco-agriculture.”

On alternative solutions:

“The only guaranteed solution to fix malnutrition is a diverse healthy diet. Providing people with real food based on ecological agriculture not only addresses malnutrition, but is also a scaleable solution to adapt to climate change. We’ve documented communities across the Philippines that continue to express concerns about using GE golden rice as a solution. It is irresponsible to impose GE golden rice as a quick remedy to people on the front lines and who do not welcome it, particularly when there are safe and effective options already available.

“Greenpeace Philippines is already working with NGO partners and farmers in the Philippines to boost climate resiliency (4). There’s a real chance here for governments and the philanthropic community to support these endeavours by investing in climate-resilient ecological agriculture and empowering farmers to access a balanced and nutritious diet, rather than pouring money down the drain for GE ‘Golden’ rice.”

Tax Cuts Deliver Real - and Underestimated - Economic Benefits

Economic benefits of company tax cuts are real – and underestimated

Michael Potter 9 June 2016

Why does Australia attract substantial foreign investment? Broadly, because we offer better returns than similar investments overseas.

But Australia is a small country, and the pool of funds looking for good investments is vast, particularly with global interest rates so low. As a result, foreign investment into Australia can be particularly sensitive to returns. Company tax clearly has an impact on these returns. But Australia’s company tax system is uncompetitive, and becoming more so as other countries cut their tax rates (as outlined in the research report The Case Against Tax Increases in Australia, publishing June 7). This may be one reason why non-­mining investment is falling, despite the end of the mining boom.

The benefits of addressing this investment problem are shown in Treasury modelling. Lower tax equals more foreign investment; more investment means a bigger economy, which generates gains for wages, incomes and even a gain to government revenue (or a fiscal dividend), partly offsetting the costs.

Employment is missing from this list, but this is actually a result of the models assuming that there is full employment. If there is an unemployment queue, then a tax cut will provide more jobs. So write that up as an underestimate of the benefit of a tax cut.

A central part of these models is the company tax imputation system, which taxes distributed profits at an Australian shareholder’s marginal tax rate. A high, low or zero company rate makes no difference to the taxation of distributed profits. This also means the windfall gain to Australian banks from a tax cut is not large, contra the arguments of the Opposition leader.

Does this mean that the company tax rate doesn’t matter for Australian shareholders? No. Undistributed profits are affected by the company rate. Listed companies retained about one third of profits on average from 2005 to 2015, according to the Reserve Bank, while ATO data suggests the average for all companies is about 45%. Effectively, the impact of the tax rate grows as income is retained longer.

Modelling results broadly include retained income on the cost side, but assume it away on the benefits side — so omitting another benefit of a company tax cut: increased incentives to invest out of retained income. Write that up as another underestimate, please.

Imputation generates a tax offset in Australia; there is another offset, which is for profits repatriated to the United States. For US multinationals, if tax payments in Australia are reduced, this could be fully offset by an increase in US tax. So does this mean that US companies are indifferent to Australian tax rates? Very clearly no. Apple, Google, Uber, Microsoft and Chevron obviously care: the accusations that they avoid Australian tax are endemic, see for example the Senate Inquiry into tax avoidance. 6/13/2016

If there is an unemployment queue, then a tax cut will provide more jobs. So write that up as an underestimate of the benefit of a tax cut. ­These companies wouldn’t avoid Australian tax if it made no difference to their worldwide tax payments. So most, if not all, US companies do feel the impact of Australian tax rates. They can postpone, almost indefinitely, the US tax offset by ensuring that Australian income is not repatriated to the US, and when they do repatriate, the offset is often not one­for­one. Hence, the Henry Tax Review was fairly dismissive of this issue, as was a discussion in the New Zealand context by tax academic George Zodrow.

As noted earlier, the costs of a company tax cut are partly returned through higher economic growth. This fiscal dividend is also increased if the tax cut results in less tax avoidance, a likely result given the (allegedly massive) avoidance of US multinationals.

Modelling by Independent Economics has most of the fiscal dividend of a company tax cut coming from reduced tax avoidance. If this result is seen as implausible, then look to Treasury modelling: they have most of the fiscal dividend coming from growth and less than 30% (probably much less) coming from reduced tax avoidance.

Based on this Treasury modelling, the cost of the tax cut, net of the fiscal dividend, is $4.2 billion. The modelled increase in national income is about $11 billion: a benefit that is more than 2.6 times the cost. The modelled increase in GDP is $18.1 billion, more than 4.3 times the cost. Clearly a beneficial investment, particularly given that the modelling results are likely to be underestimates as argued earlier.

On this basis, a company tax cut is a particularly valuable policy for Australia’s economy — and should remain a priority.

This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review. Michael Potter is an economist working in Sydney. He has worked for the Parliamentary Budget Office, the National Farmers' Federation, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and as an adviser to the federal Coalition. He has worked at the Federal Departments of Treasury, Environment (advising on the Murray­Darling Basin Plan) and Prime Minister & Cabinet (where he advised then Prime Minister John Howard on the introduction of the GST). He has recently published a critique of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty­First Century.