You quoted Lincoln as follows: "When we buy manufactured goods abroad, we get the goods and the foreigner gets the money. When we buy the manufactured goods at home, we get both the goods and the money."
What he was missing was the fact that money costs very little to produce. We should gladly give it to other nations in return for valuable goods...it is on the surface, a GREAT deal for us..and oddly enough, especially if they never spend it here, while continuing to send us great stuff for essentially nothing(cost of printing money)!
Of course, the rest of the world could not allow such a situation to stand. The rest of the world being smarter than that, will demand that we honor the money we printed, and so the money in fact MUST come home to roost(when buying abroad, we do get the money too, Mr. Lincoln), creating jobs here which fulfill the needs of the rest of the world. This process creates worldwide efficiencies. Tariffs create worldwide inefficiencies. Lincoln was simply wrong.
Freedom Works,
Dan B |
