The Founding Fathers created a Central Bank, and originally had no tariffs. But of course, you don't care about the facts or reason. You have already shown that much.
Smoote-Hawley Tarriff
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The Founding Fathers created a Central Bank, and originally had no tariffs. But of course, you don't care about the facts or reason. You have already shown that much.
ProIndividual
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Fail...all utopias are uniform by coercion or some fantasy of human unity. The constitution uses monopolies to attain this uniformity (which we all see is impossible with 300 million citizens). Anarchism, as I've explained time and again, lacks any aspiration for uniformity. It simple asks that coercion is illegal uniformly, to both individuals and institutions (like government). Therefore tax is theft, conscription is akin to slavery, and war is the health of the State (the monopolies). We simply ask, again, that you box with willing boxers, and let us be the audience. Stop punching us in our face against our wills, we aren't willing boxers. You can't say it's assault when a person does it, but it's just fair baoxing when the government does it.
That is the definition of utopian...
...an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. (This implies a monopoly, something anarchism rebukes.)
Anarchism cannot be utopian by it's definition...nice slander of my beliefs though, thanks.
And after 200+ years of swearing the document restrains government growth, and gives us a small government state utopia, have you not noticed it fails and just gives us larger and larger government? Repeating the same mistakes over and again expecting a different result is...
...the definition of insanity.
If we try for anarchy, and we get your small government (or better yet, God forbid, VOLUNTARY governmnet and not tyranny), I'll cry me a river. But logically it follows, if you try for small govt State and get a large one, then if you try for a lack of a State you may just get your small govt.
Just a rational thought.
Do you read more than one or two sentences of anybody's posts because nowhere did anyone, nor does history state what you just said. In fact everyone has stated just the opposite of what you just said.
The Founding Fathers did not create Central Banks, Foreign bankers created them. President Woodrow Wilson ,who is not a Founding Father, but who is a progressive invited them into the seat of our government in 1914 (well after the creation of the United States). It has also been clearly stated several times that George Washington and Jefferson (Founding Fathers) did use tariffs with very successful results:
Shopan wrote in a previous post giving links for documentation:
Nevertheless, Jefferson (who is a Founding Father) 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
I wrote: After the Revolutionary War was won, Washington (who is a Founding Father) knew that as long as Americans were dependent on products from England, we would never truly be free of their control. So in1789 his administration imposed a tariff (taxes on certain imported goods). It was designed to encourage “American Made” products. Note: The United States use to feed the world, but has now become dependent on the world to feed us.
Gandhi (not a Founding Father, but famous man who freed India from British colonialism. He was assassinated before he could free them from the Central Bank ) did not use tariffs to accomplish India’s independence from the British. But he did encourage his people to produce their own products. He encouraged his people to make their own salt from the sea in spite of beatings from the British, and he also encouraged them to wear their traditional attire, and even to spin the cotton to weave them. http://educatorssite.com/?p=650
The stated goal of progressives like George Soros. and Carl Marx is to destroy the Republic, create the delusion of a democracy (mob rule), then anarchy, and finely offer people a solution to the chaos with a World Governance. That fact is not said to insinuate all anarchists here are after that goal, but it is what many progressives have written about as their goal .
"Democracy is the road to socialism." Karl Marx (note the Founding Fathers created a Republic, and were opposed to democracies. It was under Woodrow Wilson (a progressive. not a Founding Father) that the U.S. started being described as a democracy, and word definitions began to be changed.
P.S. Not only did our Founding Fathers not create the Central Banks.... they warned against them. Are you aware of how dumb your above statement sounds? It appears that you are here, no to contribute to intelligent conversation, but to disrupt them.
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ProIndividual. Having lived and worked on cattle ranches in the wilderness mountains of Arizona, I know that small groups can operate successfully without government assistance or interference, and it is an awesome experience. However, I would hate to think we had to stand against a foreign invasion with what little we had. I know what happened to the Tibetans.
Governments are dangerous, sort of like having a guard dog...he can be an asset only if one keeps control of him rather than the reverse. History shows that Constitutionally restricted Republics are the least dangerous only if the people are educated (not by government), and stay vigilant.
Governments are dangerous, sort of like having a guard dog...he can be an asset only if one keeps control of him rather than the reverse. History shows that Constitutionally restricted Republics are the least dangerous only if the people are educated (not by government), and stay vigilant.
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Paul Or Nothing II
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Firstly, thanks for admitting the obvious that China uses tariffs for the benefit of CORPORATIST INTERESTS, NOT THE CHINESE PEOPLE, which itself tells us how bad tariffs are.
Yes, average Chinese person's living standard is rising BUT it'd rise EVEN FASTER if they weren't forced pay HIGHER PRICES on many goods because then they could enjoy more goods & thereby enjoy a EVEN BETTER living standard than they're enjoying; their living standard would be rising even FASTER, if their government weren't diluting their purchasing-power by diluting their currency to keep avoid short-term unemployment of low-skilled people, they're essentially taking money from the middleclasses to
Further, have you ever studied economics & that markets always move towards equilibrium in the long-run? The thing is that Chinese people were subjected to destitute poverty for a long time because Chineses market was closed so there was less competition for US & Western labor, after China (& even India) significantly opened up their economies, that unleashed a huge previously untapped labor-market which now was in direct compatition with their Western equals who'd been earning inflated wages due to less competition & regulations such as wage-laws in the West & had almost created a monopoly, & as it works with markets, when more competition enters, the prices go down so the the Western inflated wages are going down while Chinese, Indian, etc wages are moving up & market-equilibrium will be reached when both Western & "Eastern" wages meet & after that point, BOTH Western & "Eastern" wages will start to rise as they can all ask for higher wages without fear of losing jobs. This is what free trade, in the long-run, it benefits everyone but too bad people are so obsessed with using tyrannical measures, including tariffs, to gain in the short-run.
And you can't hope to circumvent the market, nobody can in the long-run can do that, even Fed & central-bankers around the world think they can keep producing fictional money & still circumvent the market but they CAN'T, it's the market-equilibrium that causes "bust" after an inflation-driven "boom" caused by central-banks but as you might know by now, it doesn't last & in the long-run, the market-equilibrium causes a "correction" to occur & a "bust" inevitably follows.
In the same way, if you try to circumvent the market by raising prices on cheaper imports then that REDUCES the number of goods in the domestic markets & INCREASES PRICES because the whole process merely "redistributes" income of the rich & the middleclasses among the poor & it may have some good effect for poor Americans earning a little higher wage BUT in the long-run, the country as a whole is poorer than otherwise it would've been as the savings/capital of the rich & middleclasses is absorbed & the thing with this process is that those who've become rich by bribing politicians remain rich but those who've become rich justly by providing useful goods/services unnecessarily lose their capital & this is an egregious violation of their property-rights.
This is just basic economics you should already know if you wish to argue economics but obviously, you & your buddies are NOT interested in understanding economics, they're interested in the DOGMA that "whatever Founders believed must be right", you don't believe in independent thinking & that's NOT how one makes FACTUAL arguments.
Moreover, you've NOT done anything to dispute my case that tariff-TAX causes a form of socialism & corporatism.
As I've said, tariffs are a TAX on AMERICAN PEOPLE because importers just add the tariff-tax to the price, & all Americans won't be buying imported goods &/or definitely, all Americans won't be buying them to the same extent, which means some Americans will be paying more into the government than others. This is hardly different from socialist progressive income tax that you tariffers so dislike. Why is the socialist progressive income taxation so bad? Because it forces some Americans to pay more into the government that other Americans & that's UNFAIR because government is supposed to treat ALL AMERICANS EQUALLY & tariff-TAX violates this principle, that means some Americans are benefitting at the cost of other Americans, that's what socialism is all about.
And as I've explained before, Wilson was NOT a free trader, someone just saying something does NOT mean that they actually mean it, he supported REGULATED, CORPORATIZED trade as do most internatiolist-corporatists, & when big businesses can bribe the politicians & make the "regulations" that favor them then in that environment, they don't need tariffs BUT if we'd limited government which facilitated an UNREGULATED market then these people won't be able to use regulations to get unfair advantage so in that environment, if you leave tariffs in the hands of politicians then they'll be bribed & tariffs will be used for the benefit of the corporations & early American history is ample proof of this, the political tariff-war between the North & the South is crystal clear. Northern politicians always wanted to tariff to make inefficient Northern businesses more competitive & to subsidize Northern businesses with the tariff-revenues.
Founders were NOT infallible, they left slavery in tact, non-propertied white men & women weren't allowed to vote, same with blacks so the argument that "tariffs are good because Founders supported them" is completely baseless.
And guess what, due to the Chinese people's pressure, Chinese government is lowering tariffs - China to cut import tariffs on mid-range, high-end products
May be some of the regular Chinese people have the commonsense to realize that ADDING COSTS to goods makes them COSTLIER & therefore they're able to buy/enjoy LESS of goods & thereby their living standards is LOWERED.
The assumption that China is completely export-dependent country is fallacious, huge chunk of their economy is driven by domestic-consumption; it might come as a surprise to some of you but the 1.3 billion or whatever people they've, they do CONSUME goods/services
And that's the reason they've import-tariffs so that people are forced to buy HIGH-PRICED local goods, benefittng the local companies while the ordinary Chinese people are subjected to HIGH PRICES & LOWER LIVING STANDARDS as they're forced to spend more of their incomes on less goods.And for the whole theory of "oh, they want to destroy the chosen land ie America" is just conspiracism at its height. British empire didn't fall because someone caused them to fall, they fell because the people on the lands they were OCCUPYING eventually got pissed off & kicked them out, it was NOT because they'd a central-bank or because they'd free trade; the numbers of the British were TINY compared to the people in the lands they were occupying so sooner or later, some of them were bound to overthrow the British & then a trend would've followed even if they did NOT have central-bank & free trade.
And, Central-banking isn't endemic to Britain or US only, even China & other countries have central-banks which are just as destructive, corporatist & elitist & are raping the local people so saying that "oh, they're helping the Chinese but hurting the US" is just ridiculous, they're hurting EVERYONE.
Further, America didn't surpass Britain because of tariffs, tariffs only raised prices on American people while benefitting the corporatist businesses; America surpassed Britain because it was extremely free as well as it'd many more resources & people than Britain.
And even if we keep the sound economic arguments aside for a moment, who'll be administering the tariffs? - THE POLITICIANS. Who do they work for? - The plutocrats & corporatists that bribe them & fund their campaigns. So you can give ANY power to politicians to meddle in the markets & its only going to be used to benefit the corporatist interests & that's exactly why it's important that they are NOT given ANY powers to meddle in the economy & it is because politicians always have been & always will be corrupt that we must have the smallest government with very restricted scope of power.
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Paul Or Nothing II
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And you must really love socialism & corporatism I guess. Again, if you think "handful of elitists" are affected by raising of prices then I'm sorry to say but you seem to have no clue about even the basic economics. You ought to understand the basic fact of economics that manufacturing goods or whatever, whenever prices are unnecessarily forced to be raised on ANYTHING across the chain, it eventually raises prices on the CONSUMERS so you're NOT asking to raise the prices on "elitist businesses" when use impose tariffs on manufacturing goods, you're essentially raising prices on the CONSUMERS ie AMERICAN PEOPLE.
As for people making Big Macs, they're NOT "entitled" to a good incomes, NOBODY is "entitled" to anything other than what their skill fetches them, if those people want to earn more then they must improve/raise their skill-level & thereby command a higher income; if you expect that some Americans should pay higher prices on goods & thereby have a lower living standard just so that other Americans could earn a higher income beyond what their skill deserves & thereby INEFFICIENT businesses should be able to make profits then obviously you're a socialist & a corporatist, there are no two ways about that, it's a fact.
As I've said before, tariffs are a TAX & it's a TAX on AMERICAN PEOPLE & because not American will buy imported goods to the same extent, the tariff-TAX causes some Americans to pay more into the government than other Americans which means it's an INEQUITABLE form of taxation, similar to the socialist progressive income tax of today which forces some Americans to pay more into the government than other Americans which goes against the principle that government must treat ALL AMERICANS EQUALLY.
NONE of this has much to do with tariffs & the fact that it's an INEQUITABLE form of taxation. Everything you're describing above is the product of governments & politicians using their power to benefit those who bribe & fund them & guess what, who administers the tariffs? - THE POLITICIANS. So even if we keep the sound economic arguments against tariffs aside, nothing is going to change the fact that politicians always have & always will be corrupt & they'll use their powers to benefit those that bribe them. So in the current environment where corporatist elite can control the markets by controlling the "regulations" (including trade agreements) then they don't need to push for tariffs BUT if we go back to limited form of government & the UNREGULATED markets that they facilitate then tariffs will be the only tool the corporate-elite will've to gain an unfair advantage in the markets so as the early American history & the tariff-war between the North & the South shows, it'll used to benefit the corporatist interests at the expense of the American people having to pay higher prices on goods & being subjected to lower living standards than they could've had.
Paul Or Nothing II
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I'm NOT calling "everyone & everything" communist/socialist, I'm only those things that ARE communist/socialist & not understanding what communism/socialism is makes you look like a fool
Further, here's what's foolish, you can't be "firmly capitalist" by supporting tariffs because capitalism are about free trade & tariffs are anti-free trade & therefore anti-capitalism.
Here's the thing, economies are very complex phenomena so there may be some factors that may put downward pressure on costs while at the same time, there may be other factors that may simultaneously be putting upward pressure on costs but that doesn't mean that the downward factors putting downward pressure don't exist.
The thing is that if those same goods are produced by American asking higher wages then it automatically mean that those goods will cost more than they do when they're produced by cheaper laborers.
As for the unemployed Americans, as I've said, the wage-laws, over-regulation, over-taxation & Fed causing these boom-bust cycles, government destroying capital by sucking it out of the private sector through taxes, all these things need to be resolved & the American unemployment wouldn't be an issue.
Here's the thing, if you believe in freedom & every person's right to their life, liberty & property then you must realize that products produced by the companies are the property of the company & the people that run them & they've a right to sell them at whatever price they want just like you've right to sell your property at whatever price you want & government telling them to sell at a lower price then that'd be a violation of their property-rights, & secondly, price-controls just DON'T work, government CAN'T set prices & control markets & that's why communism/socialism self-destructs, if you force people to sell their produce at a lower price than what they deem profitable then they'll stop producing it & invest somewhere else, & if there's strong demand for certain goods then that'll lead to an illegal underground-market where sellers can sell at much higher price than they would've had there been no price-controls because when it's illegal to sell at a profitable price then the risks are higher so will be the prices & the less people will be able to buy/enjoy them.
You can't get businesses to lower their profits by force without hurting the markets & the people, the only way that truly lowers profits is by allowing free competition, letting the firms to compete for customers & then they try to optimize their sales & minimize their costs as much as they can & this is only possible in a free market, it's not going to happen through government "regulation", in fact, government "regulation" is what hinders free competition.
As for "regulations", they're always just a tool in the hands of those corporatists who are willing bribe & fund politicians & bureaucrats & then they can set the rules as they see fit to counter & eliminate competition so "regulations" are unnecessary, all we need is for people's right to life, liberty & property to be protected & that'll be enough. The costs imposed due to the "regulations" are an additional imposition on the markets as they suck capital out of the economy which could otherwise be used productively.
Firstly, I'm not saying "you're communist if you don't believe what I do", it's more like "you're communist if you've communist believe in communist policies". It's the vision of communist central-planners to produce everything that the country needs or at least that's what they say, & you should know how that works out eventually
So it should be obvious to any "non-communist" that the country just can't ensure that it produces everything it needs, some it'll produce & export, others it'll've import or at least it's the better to do so if it can't produce it as well cost-effectively as some other country, afterall the more goods/services there are domestically the better off the people will be so non point in raising prices & thereby forcing people to spend MORE of their income on LESS goods.Anyways, the thing is that you think everyone else on the planet is capable of producing everything well & cheaply except Americans; it has to be said that you've a very low view of the the American people
The problem is that you & other tariffers here put too much emphasis on manufacturing goods even though clearly a lot of these countries are producing them because they're mostly low-paid jobs & they do it because they're much poorer & uneducated & most of them incapable of doing high-skilled work.
As I've said in the other post, markets tend to move towards equilibrium in the long-run & because a lot of these bigger labor-markets were closed, the Western labor had little competition so for a long time, a lot of the unskilled & low-skilled Western laborers have enjoyed over-inflated wages due to regulations such as wage-laws as well as less competition but after these bigger untapped labor-markets especially China & India were opened up, they were/are in direct competition with their Western equals so obviously a lot of Western inflated incomes are going to come down while "Eastern" incomes are going to rise until the two reach an equilibrium & then they might start moving up again for everyone as the labor-market is getting closer to getting completely tapped BUT the upside is that more labor mean more goods/services are being produced in the world & as you might know, higher supply puts downward pressure on costs (exactly the same thing with labor) so we can try to circumvent the market by putting tariffs & stuff but in the long-run markets always win, so as I've said, if we try to force those jobs to remain here & pay unnecessarily higher wages to Americans then that's just going to drive the jobs & capital out of the country like it has been for a while & imposing additional tariff-tax will raise prices further & drive the living standards of all Americans downwards.
The biggest wrong assumption you make that people in these poor countries will forever work for peanuts when that's not true at all, incomes & living standards in these countries have been rising so sooner or later, as I've said, their incomes & Western incomes will reach an equilibrium level, they're NOT going to be perpetually working for $1 an hour
so most of your fears are completely unfounded.What we need to do is get rid of wage-laws, over-regulation, over-taxation, Fed's boom-bust cycles, stop the destruction of capital through socialism & these are the real issues that need to be dealt with. Imagine that over 40% of GDP is used up by the government (federal, state, local), imagine if most of this was left in the private sector by significantly cutting taxes & regulations, that'd create a lot of jobs, more goods/services, thereby lower prices & higher living standard than currently enjoyed by the American people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bank_of_the_United_States
You have no understanding of anything about history, economics, or liberty. You have shown no knowledge of anything thus far. You openly reject all theories and empirical evidence. You have never even heard of the Articles of Confederation, the First Bank of the United States, or the Second Bank of the United States. You have made no coherent argument in any of these threads. Pasting together random quotes and denying historical fact(tariffs and the central bank in this case) does not make you look smart. It makes you look dumb.
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Touche. I am sure you are very intelligent.
Wikipedia has an official sounding name. However it is often a very unreliable resource because anyone can submit an article to them, and Wikipedia accepts them checking only for interest not accuracy.
The first link you posted talks much about the Continental Congress having no power to tax, and how it hindered the success of battle against England...that is true. The Continental Congress had no tariff because it did not have the power to tax at all. However, as soon as the Union took place, the Founding Fathers, wanting to make sue they did not repeat the problems the Country experienced under the Continental Congress, did make sure the "More Perfect Union" (as they referred to it) did have the power to tax, and included tariffs in the Constitution . Washington (our first President ) , as stated in earlier posts, did use tariffs which helped develop the devastated American industry and helped facilitate our independence from England.
The second one does state some facts, but leaves out enough that it is rather misleading.
The story of central banking goes back at least to the seventeenth century, to the founding of the first institution recognized as a central bank, the Swedish Riksbank. Established in 1668 as a joint stock bank, it was chartered to lend the government funds and to act as a clearing house for commerce. A few decades later (1694), the most famous central bank of the era, the Bank of England,
While these early central banks helped fund the government’s debt, they were also private entities that engaged in banking activities. Because they held the deposits of other banks, they came to serve as banks for bankers, facilitating transactions between banks or providing other banking services. They became the repository for most banks in the banking system because of their large reserves and extensive networks of correspondent banks.
The U.S. experience was most interesting. It had two central banks in the early nineteenth century, the Bank of the United States (1791–1811) and a second Bank of the United States (1816–1836). Both were set up on the model of the Bank of England, but unlike the British, Americans bore a deep-seated distrust of any concentration of financial power in general, and of central banks in particular, so that in each case, the charters were not renewed. This paragraph is what you were referring to. Note: These early banks were on the gold Standard.
Although the last vestiges of the gold standard disappeared in 1971, its appeal is still strong. Those who oppose giving discretionary powers to the central bank are attracted by the simplicity of its basic rule. Others view it as an effective anchor for the world price level. Still others look back longingly to the fixity of exchange rates. Despite its appeal, however, many of the conditions that made the gold standard so successful vanished in 1914. (Woodrow Wilson's term) In particular, the importance that governments attach to full employment means that they are unlikely to make maintaining the gold standard link and its corollary, long-run price stability, the primary goal of economic policy.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GoldStandard.html [URL="http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/officer.gold.standard"] http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/officer.gold.standard
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Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1828, was determined to end the power of the central bankers over the United States. He made the following statements:
“It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners… is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country? … Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence… would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy.”
“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to root you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will root you out.”
And he did root the out in 1836. But they returned under Woodrow Wilson in what is now called The Federal Reserve.
In 1835, President Jackson completely paid off the U.S. national debt. He is the only U.S. president that has ever been able to accomplish this.
Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Andrew Jackson, but he survived. It is alleged that Lawrence said that “wealthy people in Europe” had put him up to it.
James A. Garfield became president in 1881, and he was a staunch opponent of the banking powers. In 1881 he said the following….
“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
President Garfield was shot about two weeks later by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2nd, 1881. He died from medical complications on September 19th, 1881.
In 1914 the Federal Reserve (New Name For Central Bank…if people don’t like it, just change the name) opened for business again under Woodrow Wilson. (a progressive President who was hated by the people at that time( Note: even though it has the word “Federal” in it’s name, it is not part of the Federal Government…it is privately owned by International Bank Cartels.
One of the key players in the creation of the Federal Reserve was Mayer Armshel Rothschild. He made the following statement:
“Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws”
The Federal Reserve is a staunch supporter of Keynesian Economics which basically believes that “debt is money”.
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showpan
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In reality, everything you claim is just the opposite. The plutonomy report describes exactly what they are doing and eliminating tariffs while paying companies to move was essential to their globalist strategy. The FED used monetary policies to gain control of large industries and bad trade agreements created an unfair advantage that favored companies to relocate. The result is a large inequality that has left 1/4 of this country unemployed or underemployed. Their version of "free markets" is Marxist and they are leading the world into corporate fascism.
Fox McCloud
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You haven't countered a single point he's made--you're just sticking negative labels on things and leaving at that---or worse, insinuating it's all part of some global conspiracy...if you're just going to throw out claims like this or engage in name-calling, then you've already lost the debate.
You got that part right...Ron Paul writes:
"The real enemy of tax reform is the spending culture in Washington. Let me repeat: we will never have tax reform in this country until Congress changes its spending habits. The reform rhetoric, regardless of which party it comes from, never changes the reality that federal spending grows every year. Congress spent $2.4 trillion in the last Bush budget; the new budget proposes to spend $2.7 trillion. The same unconstitutional agencies are funded, the same unwise programs are perpetuated, but at higher levels than last year. The previous budget serves merely as a baseline; the only question in any given year is how much spending will increase. Once created, no spending program is ever eliminated. The cycle goes on and on, with different administrations and different people in Congress."
"But could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck. Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion — a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000! Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all. It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul316.html
I think it was Jace who said something to the effect that the tax on labor is far more dangerous then the tariff... and we divide ourselves over the Tariff? It's sort of like the news reporting on Paris Hilton while the Country burns. I can only imagine how delighted progressives are that we argue over tariffs rather uniting, and finding ways to end the fed, end the IRS, and repeal the tax on labor.
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That's a nice rant and all, but it has little to do with the facts that the Founding Fathers created a central bank(three times), and originally had no tariffs.
therepublic
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bump
therepublic
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Exactly, and we could argue that until dooms day getting absolutely nowhere, when that isn't even the real problem at hand. Have you joined the phone bank to help get Ron elected?
P.S. As romacox explained: even though tariffs worked for the first 126 years, they will not work given the current conditions. (The U.S. has the second highest business tax rate, and is littered with an increasing maze of legal requirements, and loopholes destroying every good that government touches . That would all have to be dealt with before tariffs could possibly work.) Paul Or Nothing II, and Jace both hit the nail on the head as romacox stated.
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Paul Or Nothing II
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Oh, a straw man argument. Well, this is what people are left with when their baseless arguments have got no factual legs to stand on
Seriously, can you actually read or has dogma clouded your judgement so much that you're resorting to OUTRIGHT LYING to defend your indefensible position?
I've said OVER & OVER & OVER & OVER that NAFTA & other "free trade agreements" are NOT FREE TRADE, they're REGULATED, CORPORATIZED trade & I don't support them so your insinuation that I support NAFTA is the height of INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY. But again, this is what people do when they can't make any rational arguments based of sound economic facts.
Reality EXACTLY is how I've said it is. Right now, tariffs are low because politicians & corporatists that fund them don't need tariffs to profiteer because they can profiteer using the "regulations" & "trade agreements" they enact BUT if we'd an UNREGULATED market which we would if we have a limited government then tariffs will be corporatists' ONLY tool for profiteering & gaining an unfair advantage over others, & early American history & the tariff-wars between North & South sufficiently prove this.
Saying "America did just fine" doesn't mean anything; tax is tax & inequitable is inequitable, there are no two ways about that. It doesn't change the fact that tariff-TAX is an INEQUITABLE form of taxation & that some Americans were FORCED to pay more into the government than others which violates the principle that government should treat ALL its citizens EQUALLY.
Again, you're NOT making an argument based on sound economics, it's just dogma.
Why is it that you're being so intellectually dishonest to suggest that just because I'm opposed to tariffs that I'm for an income-tax? It's really disingenuous of you to make such insinuations in spite of the fact that I've already said that I hate income-tax just as much as I hate tariff-tax, they're both INEQUITABLE forms of taxation where some Americans pay more into the government than other Americans.
This is a completely philosophical movement so nothing wrong with discussing things & arriving at facts using logic, reason & sound economics.
Just because we won't be repealing the income-tax tomorrow, doesn't mean we can't talk about why it's so bad; in the same way, just because we won't be raising tariffs tomorrow doesn't mean we can't talk about why they are so bad.
While I agree that getting rid of over-regulation & over-taxation MUST be a priority BUT tariffs NEVER "worked" unless you mean that they "worked" in FORCING Americans to pay higher prices on goods & thereby subjected them to lower living standards that they could've had otherwise while corporatists that funded the politicians profiteered at the expense of American people.
Mostly, straw man arguments is all they've got. None of them seem interested in debating sound economics, they're all about "Founders said this", "Wilson did that", "Ron Paul said this", "income tax that" & so on but no factual arguments based on reason, logic & sound economics.
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therepublic
Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2009
- Messages
- 332
Oh, a straw man argument. Well, this is what people are left with when their baseless arguments have got no factual legs to stand on
Seriously, can you actually read or has dogma clouded your judgement so much that you're resorting to OUTRIGHT LYING to defend your indefensible position?
I've said OVER & OVER & OVER & OVER that NAFTA & other "free trade agreements" are NOT FREE TRADE, they're REGULATED, CORPORATIZED trade & I don't support them so your insinuation that I support NAFTA is the height of INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY. But again, this is what people do when they can't make any rational arguments based of sound economic facts.
Reality EXACTLY is how I've said it is. Right now, tariffs are low because politicians & corporatists that fund them don't need tariffs to profiteer because they can profiteer using the "regulations" & "trade agreements" they enact BUT if we'd an UNREGULATED market which we would if we have a limited government then tariffs will be corporatists' ONLY tool for profiteering & gaining an unfair advantage over others, & early American history & the tariff-wars between North & South sufficiently prove this.
Saying "America did just fine" doesn't mean anything; tax is tax & inequitable is inequitable, there are no two ways about that. It doesn't change the fact that tariff-TAX is an INEQUITABLE form of taxation & that some Americans were FORCED to pay more into the government than others which violates the principle that government should treat ALL its citizens EQUALLY.
Again, you're NOT making an argument based on sound economics, it's just dogma.
Why is it that you're being so intellectually dishonest to suggest that just because I'm opposed to tariffs that I'm for an income-tax? It's really disingenuous of you to make such insinuations in spite of the fact that I've already said that I hate income-tax just as much as I hate tariff-tax, they're both INEQUITABLE forms of taxation where some Americans pay more into the government than other Americans.
This is a completely philosophical movement so nothing wrong with discussing things & arriving at facts using logic, reason & sound economics.
Just because we won't be repealing the income-tax tomorrow, doesn't mean we can't talk about why it's so bad; in the same way, just because we won't be raising tariffs tomorrow doesn't mean we can't talk about why they are so bad.
While I agree that getting rid of over-regulation & over-taxation MUST be a priority BUT tariffs NEVER "worked" unless you mean that they "worked" in FORCING Americans to pay higher prices on goods & thereby subjected them to lower living standards that they could've had otherwise while corporatists that funded the politicians profiteered at the expense of American people.
Mostly, straw man arguments is all they've got. None of them seem interested in debating sound economics, they're all about "Founders said this", "Wilson did that", "Ron Paul said this", "income tax that" & so on but no factual arguments based on reason, logic & sound economics.
Straw men resort to insults when they have lost. If you can't kill the message, kill the messenger.
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