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To: Oeconomicus who wrote (134606)	11/11/2001 4:04:06 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>> 1. In the early years of it's existence, the US was not an industrial power. Hamilton saw protective tariffs as allowing American manufacturing industries an opportunity to develop where they might not otherwise be able to compete with more advanced European producers. << agreed. i don't see why that has to change. just after the roaring twenties we accounted for 42% of the world's manufactures. >> The biggest irony of your attempts to ally yourself and Patzi with the patriots who formed this country and wrote our constitution is that the anti-federalists of the time said that the constitution was a threat to the sovereignty of the states and that it was a sure route to the kind of tyranny they had all fought in the revolution. The federalists were seen as dangerous proponents of a big and powerful government that would trample states rights and personal liberty. << the biggest problem that you have grasping is the difference between "a big powerful government" argued in a time where there was hardly any federal government and the states all governed themselves, and a time like today when the government has grown extremely large, tyrannical and unwieldy. and trying to make the case that i would have been an anti-federalist on the notion of sovereignty rights is also simplistic and ludicrous. there are many levels of sovereignty. for instance you can have sovereignty on a national scale and a personal scale. you make the assumption (soley so you can try to discredit me) that i believe in sovereignty to such a degree that i would have never been in favor of a national government in the first place. after all i would have to surrender so much sovereignty to the national government! in fact you could take it to a further extreme and argue that craig wouldn't be in favor of any government period, because then individuals such as myself would have to cede sovereignty to the state or municipalities. of course we see how ridiculous your arguments become when you attempt to take my statements and extrapolate them to the most extreme point you can conjure up. >> 2. Tariffs were primarily used as a source of government revenue, BTW << you think? hmm, maybe that's why they didn't have income taxes back then. >> BTW. Protection of US industry or fostering its development was a secondary consideration and there was much disagreement over it, not just between protectionists and free traders, but also between the states as each had its own ideas about what industries should be protected and what goods they should be able to import with little or no duties. << not surprising is it? look at how much disagreement we have today about whether we should increases the size of federal govt by 3% or 6%! >> Still, since this was the primary source of federal revenue until this century, your finding of so many "great American protectionists" is neither surprising (since you define as protectionist anyone who ever favored a tariff, whether actually for protectionist reasons or not) nor relevant to today. << only because in this liberal new world the federal govt has grown so large that tariffs would surely not be enough to fund all the worthless government agencies. >> Some were actually protectionists (in a wholly different environment from today) and some simply saw a need for greater revenues to fund government operations (Could these great Americans have actually favored a strong, organized federal government? No! Say it ain't so!). << i don't have a problem with strong organized federal government. i do have a problem with government accounting for practically half the entire economy of the country! i do have a problem with government being the largest single employer in the country! i do have a problem with neo-lib socialists like hillary clinton trying to seize and nationalize an additional 15% of the u.s. economy! and for a century and a quarter, in all times that may be considered normal, the federal revenue was derived principally from import duties. this is a bad thing?? you are acting like i didn't know this or deem it a benefit. it is one of my arguments! in the paragraph you quoted i particularly liked this part: ... The enemies of protection retailed the theoretical arguments* for free trade and ...the benefits that would result from commercial intercourse as free as possible with foreign countries.* nice theory and a utopian wish for free intercourse with other countries. nice liberal well intentioned "theory" but sadly falls short in the real world. i guess that's why by and large the protectionists won out for over a centruy, huh.