Smoote-Hawley Tarriff

[freshjiva]

Tariffs alone aren't necessary "protectionist". They are one of the original sources of revenue for the federal government. In that sense, I wouldn't consider them acts of protectionism, but rather a preferable alternative to internal taxation.

The Electorate clearly applauded Jefferson's move to eliminate internal taxation in favor of small import tariffs. That's why the Treasury raised more tax revenue despite eliminating many excise/sales taxes on goods. It's a classic example of the Laffer Curve in action.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

What didn't you understand?

Why his party spent half of its time trying to lower tariffs? Why he opposed Hamilton on tariffs? Why you're claiming that funding government is the same thing as protectionism?

To be honest, I'm shocked that someone is trying to claim that Jefferson, a fan of Smith, Say and opponent of mercantilism, tried to raise tariffs in order to protect American industry. In the dozens of history and economics books I've read, and the hundreds of articles, I've never heard of anyone put Jefferson in the pro tariff camp.

 

[kah13176]

I think we must identify the purpose of the economy.

It's entire purpose is consumption. It comes down to trading a surplus of what we have for a deficit of what we need. Imagine a world without government. Only those who are productive survive, which encourages competition, downward pressure on prices, and increased quality.

With trade barriers, it's harder to trade what you have for what you need. Maybe someone in another country makes something way better than a domestic producer. When there's trade barriers, it is harder for the consumer to obtain what he needs. Thus we see, trade barriers not only affect the consumer, but bereft the innovative producer of incentives - i.e. profits. This is counter-productive.

Therefore, tarrifs impede people's ability to thrive.

Again, the purpose of the economy is not to employ people for the sake of employment. If that were so, people would be paid to dig holes and fill them up again. The purpose is always to meet demand. Also, seeing the need to prop up domestic producers is also counter-intuitive to libertarian philosophy. We are all created with equal claims to life, liberty, and property no matter the place of birth. Tarrifs result in indirect theft from foreign producers since they rob them of potential profits.

I don't care if Ron Paul himself goes against what I've said above. The logic is infallible.

 

[romacox]

"Experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort; and if... [we will purchase] nothing foreign where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained without regard to a difference of price, it will not be our fault if we do not soon have a supply at home equal to our demand, and wrest that weapon of distress from the hand which has wielded it." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin, 1816. ME 14:392

"The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency." --Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1815.

"I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may." --Thomas Jefferson to B. S. Barton, 1815. ME 19:223

Thomas Jefferson repealed all internal taxes and ran the government solely from trade tariff revenue.
"1800 - With the assistance of his Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, newly elected Republican President Thomas Jefferson sought to reorient the fiscal policy of the United States. Jefferson’s four main goals included: (1) a reduction in government expenditures, (2) a balanced budget; (3) a decrease in the size of the national debt, and (4) alleviation of the tax burden. The latter two objectives seemed to conflict with one another; specifically, Jefferson's desire to abrogate Hamilton's funded debt plan and retire all government obligations as judiciously as possible required a steady stream of revenue.

Nevertheless, Jefferson abolished all internal taxes, including the whiskey excise tax and the land tax. Meanwhile, the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, though a diplomatic minefield for American statesmen, proved a significant stimulus to the economy of the United States. Vigorous commerce enriched merchants while customs duties swelled the federal Treasury. By 1808 the national debt had been reduced from $80 million to $57 million, even though the Louisiana purchase had added an $11 million liability. By 1806, duties proved so lucrative that Gallatin and Jefferson fretted about what to do with the surplus above that required for debt retirement. Treasury reserves increased from $3 million to $14 million between 1801 and 1808."
http://www.tax.org/Museum/1777-1815.htm

"Jefferson got repealed all the direct federal taxes passed by the Federalists and boasted that ordinary Americans would never see a federal tax collector in their whole lives."
http://www.friesian.com/presiden.htm

Very valuable information Showpan. I am amazed at how much my generation was misinformed, and fed words of babble. Each year it gets worse.. I have been researching lots of old documents and textbooks to sort through the babble and misinformation. History is a much greater teacher than I ever realized before, and I am surprised to find out how much history has been deliberately hidden from us. Some of what you share here I did not know. Thank you for providing it with links.

Al Gore (a proponent of Global Warming) is now telling our children that they (he and the children) know more about the environment than their parents...come to daddy Gore, he will understand because your parents are just too stupid. If one's children are being taught in the public school system today, they are being taught even more babble, and will not be able to communicate with today's parents.

New World Order And School Text Books

 

[Jace]

..

 

[Danke]

What's really messed up is a lot of libertarians and conservatives who support free trade aren't familiar with the history of free trade in our country.

One of the biggest free trade promoters we had was Woodrow Wilson--the same man who gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, universal conscription, a world war and the League of Nations.

Free trade was a large part of his internationalist agenda--or at least the agenda of those who controlled him. The Wilson administration fought against the Republicans of the day to get rid of tariffs, and won for a brief time.

After World War I, there was a huge American backlash against the internationalism of the Wilson administration and against the international bankers who profited off the war. The tariffs came back in. The 1920s were a boom time.

Republicans before World War II were for tariffs and small government. They followed in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers who saw tariffs as a way to fund a limited government and maintain economic independence. They understood that political independence went hand in hand with economic independence. Lose one and you lose the other. The Founding Fathers were aware that America, due to its geography and free enterprise spirit, was in a unique position to become both economically independent and prosperous. During the 19th century when our tariffs were highest, we became the most prosperous and advanced nation in history up to then.

At the same time, Great Britain followed the free trade policies of empire and fell into industrial decline, losing industries to the United States.

In response to the American anti-internationalist backlash of the 1920s, the bankers funded such things as the Council on Foreign Relations and Rhodes Scholarships to provide internationalist leadership in the United States.

The globalists have always been about economic interdependence. I've heard my whole life, starting in public elementary school, that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression. Obviously, it didn't. The Fed caused the Depression by causing a stock market bubble followed by a crash when it tightened the money supply. Even Bernanke admits this.

After FDR was elected, he repealed Smoot-Hawley and worked hard to promote free trade, but the Depression continued for eight more years despite the reduction of tariffs. FDR then manuevered us into another world war and used fearmongering and debt to build the military-industrial complex. He drafted the unemployed, killed off 500,000 working age American men, and fire-bombed our industrial competitors into ash. After the war, we were the last man standing and had a 30-year period of prosperity when we had no economic competitors because we had destroyed them. We dominated international trade while our competitors were rebuilding what was destroyed by the most destructive war in history.

Japan and Europe used protectionism and American capital to rebuild their industries. Korea, Taiwan and now China have followed the Japanese lead, fiercely protecting their home markets while using every manner of government intervention to gain a competitive advantage in foreign markets. All our competitors are highly protectionist, while we follow the the internationalist free trade framework set up by FDR and the globalists.

Free trade ideologues do not follow in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. They are following the internationalist school of thought championed by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Bush, Obama and all of the media--from MSNBC to Fox, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.

If you are for small government and free enterprise, the best solution is to kill the Fed, end the income tax, end the empire, put up tariffs to fund a limited government and revive our free enterprise system here in the USA. The American market is the greatest wealth producer in history, but our leaders have sold it off to foreigners in exchange for empire.

We should take the Founding Fathers' approach. That is the American solution.

Unfortunately, for a long time now our leadership has other concerns than the well-being of the American people. We have been bombarded with free trade propaganda forever now. Look around you. How has all this free trade worked out? Is shopping at Wal-Mart worth losing our nation and our Constitution to the globalist agenda?

The globalists are going to keep pushing free trade and mass immigration on us until the American people is absorbed into the global proletariat. That's their vision for us. We will all be poor wage slaves in a globalized world where free enterprise is dead, replaced by an international corporatism fed by a centrally controlled global fiat currency.

We're in a trade war now and we're losing badly. We're losing the country that the Founding Fathers risked everything for.

End the Fed and end the income tax and let foreigners fund the government through tariffs in exchange for being allowed to make a buck here. They are making a killing right now and it's killing us.

Good to see you back posting, Jace.

 

[mtj458]

What's really messed up is a lot of libertarians and conservatives who support free trade aren't familiar with the history of free trade in our country.

One of the biggest free trade promoters we had was Woodrow Wilson--the same man who gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, universal conscription, a world war and the League of Nations.

Free trade was a large part of his internationalist agenda--or at least the agenda of those who controlled him. The Wilson administration fought against the Republicans of the day to get rid of tariffs, and won for a brief time.

After World War I, there was a huge American backlash against the internationalism of the Wilson administration and against the international bankers who profited off the war. The tariffs came back in. The 1920s were a boom time.

Republicans before World War II were for tariffs and small government. They followed in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers who saw tariffs as a way to fund a limited government and maintain economic independence. They understood that political independence went hand in hand with economic independence. Lose one and you lose the other. The Founding Fathers were aware that America, due to its geography and free enterprise spirit, was in a unique position to become both economically independent and prosperous. During the 19th century when our tariffs were highest, we became the most prosperous and advanced nation in history up to then.

At the same time, Great Britain followed the free trade policies of empire and fell into industrial decline, losing industries to the United States.

In response to the American anti-internationalist backlash of the 1920s, the bankers funded such things as the Council on Foreign Relations and Rhodes Scholarships to provide internationalist leadership in the United States.

The globalists have always been about economic interdependence. I've heard my whole life, starting in public elementary school, that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression. Obviously, it didn't. The Fed caused the Depression by causing a stock market bubble followed by a crash when it tightened the money supply. Even Bernanke admits this.

After FDR was elected, he repealed Smoot-Hawley and worked hard to promote free trade, but the Depression continued for eight more years despite the reduction of tariffs. FDR then manuevered us into another world war and used fearmongering and debt to build the military-industrial complex. He drafted the unemployed, killed off 500,000 working age American men, and fire-bombed our industrial competitors into ash. After the war, we were the last man standing and had a 30-year period of prosperity when we had no economic competitors because we had destroyed them. We dominated international trade while our competitors were rebuilding what was destroyed by the most destructive war in history.

Japan and Europe used protectionism and American capital to rebuild their industries. Korea, Taiwan and now China have followed the Japanese lead, fiercely protecting their home markets while using every manner of government intervention to gain a competitive advantage in foreign markets. All our competitors are highly protectionist, while we follow the the internationalist free trade framework set up by FDR and the globalists.

Free trade ideologues do not follow in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. They are following the internationalist school of thought championed by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Bush, Obama and all of the media--from MSNBC to Fox, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.

If you are for small government and free enterprise, the best solution is to kill the Fed, end the income tax, end the empire, put up tariffs to fund a limited government and revive our free enterprise system here in the USA. The American market is the greatest wealth producer in history, but our leaders have sold it off to foreigners in exchange for empire.

We should take the Founding Fathers' approach. That is the American solution.

Unfortunately, for a long time now our leadership has other concerns than the well-being of the American people. We have been bombarded with free trade propaganda forever now. Look around you. How has all this free trade worked out? Is shopping at Wal-Mart worth losing our nation and our Constitution to the globalist agenda?

The globalists are going to keep pushing free trade and mass immigration on us until the American people is absorbed into the global proletariat. That's their vision for us. We will all be poor wage slaves in a globalized world where free enterprise is dead, replaced by an international corporatism fed by a centrally controlled global fiat currency.

We're in a trade war now and we're losing badly. We're losing the country that the Founding Fathers risked everything for.

End the Fed and end the income tax and let foreigners fund the government through tariffs in exchange for being allowed to make a buck here. They are making a killing right now and it's killing us.

This whole argument is a fallacy. People X, Y, and Z support bad ideas A, B, and C. X, Y, and Z also support D. Therefore D is bad. It's a non sequitur. Let's argue the merits of free trade and leave the rest out of it. Just because a "globalist" supports free trade doesn't mean you shouldn't.

 

[nobody's_hero]

This whole argument is a fallacy. People X, Y, and Z support bad ideas A, B, and C. X, Y, and Z also support D. Therefore D is bad. It's a non sequitur. Let's argue the merits of free trade and leave the rest out of it. Just because a "globalist" supports free trade doesn't mean you shouldn't.

That's not exactly what Jace was saying.

It was more along the lines of "be aware that you're probably being played," for 'all is not what it seems' when it comes to "free trade."

An-cap/libertarians aren't looking behind the curtain on this one. As long as they keep getting cheap stuff and never try to produce anything, maybe they don't want to know what's really going on.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

Using tariffs to fund the government is wrong. Not only is it immoral, but it makes no sense.

How much revenue do you think you can get from tariffs? 300 billion? 500 billion? How much do you think you need? You're not going to be able to pay for SS or Medicare alone with that. If your goal is to reduce government spending to a few hundred billion a year, why not just charge service fees? You can't fund the current government,

Every Austrian economist supports Free Trade. Please, don't try and claim that only the bad guys support Free Trade. It's laughable, especially when most current politicians support Fair Trade bills such as NAFTA.

As for the Founding Fathers, have any of you ever heard of their first plan, the Articles of Confederation? What tariffs did they have under that again?

 

[romacox]

That's not exactly what Jace was saying.

It was more along the lines of "be aware that you're probably being played," for 'all is not what it seems' when it comes to "free trade."

An-cap/libertarians aren't looking behind the curtain on this one. As long as they keep getting cheap stuff and never try to produce anything, maybe they don't want to know what's really going on.

You are so right...it is a shell game every since Woodrow Wilson took office:
True free trade is not government funded or regulated by government as is NAFTA.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

Yes, Paul is a strong supporters of Free Trade as well.

 

[romacox]

That's not exactly what Jace was saying.

It was more along the lines of "be aware that you're probably being played," for 'all is not what it seems' when it comes to "free trade."

An-cap/libertarians aren't looking behind the curtain on this one. As long as they keep getting cheap stuff and never try to produce anything, maybe they don't want to know what's really going on.

You are so right. It has all been a shell game every since Woodrow Wilson took office. True free trade is not government regulated, negotiated or funded as is NAFTA. Ron Paul explains

 

[nobody's_hero]

Using tariffs to fund the government is wrong. Not only is it immoral, but it makes no sense.

How much revenue do you think you can get from tariffs? 300 billion? 500 billion? How much do you think you need? You're not going to be able to pay for SS or Medicare alone with that. If your goal is to reduce government spending to a few hundred billion a year, why not just charge service fees? You can't fund the current government,

Every Austrian economist supports Free Trade. Please, don't try and claim that only the bad guys support Free Trade. It's laughable, especially when most current politicians support Fair Trade bills such as NAFTA.

As for the Founding Fathers, have any of you ever heard of their first plan, the Articles of Confederation? What tariffs did they have under that again?

No one is saying that "only the bad guys support free trade."

We're saying that the "bad guys" support it, and the "good guys" don't see the problem with it. If they knew what the problem was, then they probably wouldn't support it. The an-caps don't know, or REFUSE to want to know, what is really going on. Thus, they have been trying to apply truly free market theories of the Austrian economists to the realities a centrally planned economy and are essentially committing economic suicide. These theories would be great if all the world was truly free (including the U.S.), but the world just ain't that free.

We've been experiencing a massive transfer of wealth [leaving this nation] since the Fed was created. It's been directed (FAKE!!!!). People only think they're getting a good deal.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

No one is saying that "only the bad buys support free trade."

We're saying that the "bad guys" support it, and the "good guys" don't see the problem with it. If they knew what the problem was, then they probably wouldn't support it. The an-caps don't know, or REFUSE to want to know, what is really going on. Thus, they have been trying to apply truly free market theories of the Austrian economists to the realities a centrally planned economy and are essentially committing economic suicide. These theories would be great if all the world was truly free (including the U.S.), but the world just ain't that free.

We've been experiencing a massive transfer of wealth [leaving this nation] since the Fed was created. It's been directed (FAKE!!!!). People only think they're getting a good deal.

I've seen almost no statists that support Free Trade. It's completely fabricated by the protectionist on this website who have ran out of arguments. The vast majority of statists support fair trade and government managed trade.

Few advocates of tariffs have any understanding of economics at all, so please, don't call people who support FREE trade ignorant of the issues.

Austrian economists study trade for a living. You're telling me that you know more about the problems in the economy than every single Austrian economists that has ever lived? Are you telling me that you support the Austrian school of economics on everything besides trade, because there is just one random thing that all of the hundreds of Austrian economists have been wrong about over the last 200 years? You believe that axioms apply to everything besides Free Trade?

Since the Fed was created, the United States has created ten trillion+ dollars worth of wealth inspite of the Fed, unless you're arguing that living conditions were better in 1913. I have no idea what this has to do with Free Trade though.

 

[nobody's_hero]

I've seen almost no statists that support Free Trade. It's completely fabricated by the protectionist on this website who have ran out of arguments. The vast majority of statists support fair trade and government managed trade.

Few advocates of tariffs have any understanding of economics at all, so please, don't call people who support FREE trade ignorant of the issues.

Austrian economists study trade for a living. You're telling me that you know more about the problems in the economy than every single Austrian economists that has ever lived? Are you telling me that you support the Austrian school of economics on everything besides trade, because there is just one random thing that all of the hundreds of Austrian economists have been wrong about over the last 200 years? You believe that axioms apply to everything besides Free Trade?

Since the Fed was created, the United States has created ten trillion+ dollars worth of wealth inspite of the Fed, unless you're arguing that living conditions were better in 1913. I have no idea what this has to do with Free Trade though.

here I go getting sucked in again. :o

Living conditions were better in 1913 [we didn't have the Fed—or, I should say, it was little more than an idea scribbled on a napkin that year]. We were on the road to [real] economic prosperity via a booming production powerhouse. Compare the U.S. in 1913 to any other nation in the world at the time. The burden of proof rests with the Austrian economists that tariffs [always] hurt economies, since up until we started kicking tariffs to the curb, America was a [relatively-speaking] prosperous, productive nation. (someone's about to flame me with some Latin over that one!, fire away, I've heard it before, "ergo something something")

Since we have reduced our tariffs greatly, or done away with them all together in some 'Free trade' agreements, the producers have left the United States faster than a whore leaves church when the offerin' plate is passed. We were "immoral" for protecting them when they were here in this country (oh noes! protectionism!), and now (are you ready for this?), we still do business with them while they are now protected by tariffs (these being honest-to-God, true, exhorbitant protectionist tariffs) imposed by the governments of the countries they've since relocated to. So what was the problem?—that they were "protected" here in the U.S.? That they were located here in the U.S.? In Austrian economic theory, are we supposed to rejoice in the fact that we are still "free" to do business with them even though they are still protected, just NOT here in the U.S.?

Do you not see the irony here?

Hell, at least when they were here, Americans had jobs and wealth recirculated in our economy.

I have never said the Austrian economists 'don't know what they're talking about.' I believe in Austrian economic theory.

I also happen to know that the world economy is not currently being run on sound theories, and the theory that says you are free to import from whomever you wish happens to be colliding with the reality that we are not free to export what we wish. This is NOT a natural free market shift, but I swear, in less than three more posts, some an-cap "free-trader" is going to post some load of poop about how we've naturally evolved a beyond manufacturing economy to a consumer economy.

It's been staged. You've been had. Wake up!

 

[ssantoro]

What's really messed up is a lot of libertarians and conservatives who support free trade aren't familiar with the history of free trade in our country.

One of the biggest free trade promoters we had was Woodrow Wilson--the same man who gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, universal conscription, a world war and the League of Nations.

Free trade was a large part of his internationalist agenda--or at least the agenda of those who controlled him. The Wilson administration fought against the Republicans of the day to get rid of tariffs, and won for a brief time.

After World War I, there was a huge American backlash against the internationalism of the Wilson administration and against the international bankers who profited off the war. The tariffs came back in. The 1920s were a boom time.

Republicans before World War II were for tariffs and small government. They followed in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers who saw tariffs as a way to fund a limited government and maintain economic independence. They understood that political independence went hand in hand with economic independence. Lose one and you lose the other. The Founding Fathers were aware that America, due to its geography and free enterprise spirit, was in a unique position to become both economically independent and prosperous. During the 19th century when our tariffs were highest, we became the most prosperous and advanced nation in history up to then.

At the same time, Great Britain followed the free trade policies of empire and fell into industrial decline, losing industries to the United States.

In response to the American anti-internationalist backlash of the 1920s, the bankers funded such things as the Council on Foreign Relations and Rhodes Scholarships to provide internationalist leadership in the United States.

The globalists have always been about economic interdependence. I've heard my whole life, starting in public elementary school, that Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression. Obviously, it didn't. The Fed caused the Depression by causing a stock market bubble followed by a crash when it tightened the money supply. Even Bernanke admits this.

After FDR was elected, he repealed Smoot-Hawley and worked hard to promote free trade, but the Depression continued for eight more years despite the reduction of tariffs. FDR then manuevered us into another world war and used fearmongering and debt to build the military-industrial complex. He drafted the unemployed, killed off 500,000 working age American men, and fire-bombed our industrial competitors into ash. After the war, we were the last man standing and had a 30-year period of prosperity when we had no economic competitors because we had destroyed them. We dominated international trade while our competitors were rebuilding what was destroyed by the most destructive war in history.

Japan and Europe used protectionism and American capital to rebuild their industries. Korea, Taiwan and now China have followed the Japanese lead, fiercely protecting their home markets while using every manner of government intervention to gain a competitive advantage in foreign markets. All our competitors are highly protectionist, while we follow the the internationalist free trade framework set up by FDR and the globalists.

Free trade ideologues do not follow in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. They are following the internationalist school of thought championed by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Bush, Obama and all of the media--from MSNBC to Fox, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.

If you are for small government and free enterprise, the best solution is to kill the Fed, end the income tax, end the empire, put up tariffs to fund a limited government and revive our free enterprise system here in the USA. The American market is the greatest wealth producer in history, but our leaders have sold it off to foreigners in exchange for empire.

We should take the Founding Fathers' approach. That is the American solution.

Unfortunately, for a long time now our leadership has other concerns than the well-being of the American people. We have been bombarded with free trade propaganda forever now. Look around you. How has all this free trade worked out? Is shopping at Wal-Mart worth losing our nation and our Constitution to the globalist agenda?

The globalists are going to keep pushing free trade and mass immigration on us until the American people is absorbed into the global proletariat. That's their vision for us. We will all be poor wage slaves in a globalized world where free enterprise is dead, replaced by an international corporatism fed by a centrally controlled global fiat currency.

We're in a trade war now and we're losing badly. We're losing the country that the Founding Fathers risked everything for.

End the Fed and end the income tax and let foreigners fund the government through tariffs in exchange for being allowed to make a buck here. They are making a killing right now and it's killing us.

This is hitting the nail on the head. +Rep

 

[Cutlerzzz]

here I go getting sucked in again. :o

Living conditions were better in 1913 [we didn't have the Fed—or, I should say, it was little more than an idea scribbled on a napkin that year]. We were on the road to [real] economic prosperity via a booming production powerhouse.

I'll take my internet, 80 year life expectancy, multiple cars, video games, and $42,000 per capita income.

The burden of proof rests with the Austrian economists that tariffs hurt economies, since up until we started kicking tariffs to the curb, America was a [relatively-speaking] prosperous, productive nation. (someone's about to flame me with some Latin over that one!, fire away, I've heard it before, "ergo something something")

Since we have reduced our tariffs greatly, or done away with them all together in some 'Free trade' agreements, the producers have left the United States faster than a whore in church when the offerin' plate is passed.

Kicked tariffs away? Free Trade? These never happened, and it's blatently obvious. The United States does not engage in Free Trade with anyone.

Manufacturing is at all time highs by far.

We were "immoral" for protecting them when they were here in this country (oh noes! protectionism!), and now (are you ready for this?)

You're being immoral because telling someone they have to buy something from some government protected firm, and go to jail if they buy it from outside the country and don't send a paycheck to the government. That's immoral corporatism at its finnest.

Hell, at least when they were here, Americans had jobs and wealth recirculated in our economy.

Demand is infinite. Trade policy has no long term affect on unemployment.

I'm sure that this is the part where the socialist myth about how those jobs are "bad jobs" comes into play. Well, they pay more.

http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/15824.aspx

I have never said the Austrian economists "don't know what they're talking about." I believe in Austrian economic theory.

I also happen to know that the world economy is not currently being run on sound theories, and the theory that says you are free to import from whomever you wish happens to be colliding with the reality that we are not free to export what we wish. This is NOT a natural free market shift, but I swear, in less than three more posts, some an-cap "free-trader" is going to post some load of poop about how we've naturally evolved a beyond manufacturing economy to a consumer economy.

You're disagreeing with every Austrian economist ever.

Manufacturing is at all time highs around the United States and the world. Service sector jobs generally pay more and generally have better conditions than manufacturing jobs.

It's been staged. You've been had. Wake up!

You're calling for government coercion, which 90% of economists(including all Austrian economists) disagree with in this case, in order to protect unions and corporations from competition. I think you need to look into the mirror

 

[kah13176]

I think trade barriers aren't the only thing coming into play here. Correlation doesn't mean causation.

- Regulation disparities between domestic industries and foreign counterparts - such as EPA, etc.

- Minimum wage laws.

 

[ssantoro]

I think trade barriers aren't the only thing coming into play here. Correlation doesn't mean causation.

- Regulation disparities between domestic industries and foreign counterparts - such as EPA, etc.

- Minimum wage laws.

I agree with the principles of Adam Smith and the Austrian school and have for many years. The free trade advocated by our government, WTO and NAFTA is not the fair trade ideology that produces fair and balanced exchange. Both, US regulations on domestic industry and the lack of regulation by foreign industry have created the disparity at the expense of the American people. Although there are a host of other factors that contribute to the imbalance, tariffs are only a small part of the whole equation as we know the whole thing is organic and can not be controlled by central planning.

 

[showpan]

I'll take my internet, 80 year life expectancy, multiple cars, video games, and $42,000 per capita income.

Kicked tariffs away? Free Trade? These never happened, and it's blatently obvious. The United States does not engage in Free Trade with anyone.

Manufacturing is at all time highs by far.

You're being immoral because telling someone they have to buy something from some government protected firm, and go to jail if they buy it from outside the country and don't send a paycheck to the government. That's immoral corporatism at its finnest.

Demand is infinite. Trade policy has no long term affect on unemployment.

I'm sure that this is the part where the socialist myth about how those jobs are "bad jobs" comes into play. Well, they pay more.

Manufacturing is at all time highs around the United States and the world. Service sector jobs generally pay more and generally have better conditions than manufacturing jobs.

You're calling for government coercion, which 90% of economists(including all Austrian economists) disagree with in this case, in order to protect unions and corporations from competition. I think you need to look into the mirror

I have debunked every one of your points here in this thread.
What was the dollar worth in 1913?
I'll answer that for you....a lot more than it is now....lol