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To: craig crawford who wrote (1091)	3/15/2002 8:48:36 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1643

tariffs and protectionism Interesting. I have a little researching to do before I can answer all your points, but we can start here (from your links)... great britain ushered in free trade with the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. by 1870 britain wasn't even capable of feeding itself. Of course every school kid in the UK studies 18th and 19th century British politics and history. This includes the Corn Laws. Regarding Britain "feeding herself" In 1841 Population of UK 15,914,148* In 1871 Population of UK 22,712,266* *19th century Britain. Anthony Wood. ISBN 0 582 3149 4 Longman, 1980 Fourteenth impression. i.e. The population had grown by 50% and had become an industrial nation rather then a mainly agrarian nation. Amazing statistic considering all the problems the population was saddled with. It also became a super power too, not bad for such a small nation.

To: craig crawford who wrote (1091)	3/15/2002 5:46:23 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1643

The Anti Corn Law League. Although I'm naturally cautious of school text books, their versions of history change when you live in different countries. For example: in the USA do you learn that a guy called Jethro Tull (nothing to do with the pop group, though I expect a history lesson was the start of it's name -g-) invented the seeding machine, much better then "broadcasting" seeds for a crop? I think Anthony Wood has written a balanced synopsis of the effect of the British 19th century Corn Laws though. The Corn Laws were basically a tariff on foreign grown corn that was supposed to protect the British farming interests. First on the "Anti-Corn Law League" It is not difficult to suggest the general reasons for the success of the Anti Corn Law League. It's leaders had been resourceful men of the middle class. They had been able to raise a great deal of money by which public opinion might be mobilized. Their programme, simple to understand, had united large sections of the rich and the poor, and thus stood for sectional then class conflict. Second on the economic significance of the Corn Laws and their repeal. It is less easy to assess the economic significance of the Corn Laws and their repeal. In the years of good harvests in England the price of corn was low, the country almost self sufficient and there was little market for foreign corn. In the bad years, the harvest on the Continent was also often poor and the price was consequently high. On the whole, judging from the availability of foreign corn before 1846, it seems unlikely that the price of corn would have been much lower if there had been no Corn Laws. After repeal there was considerable imports from France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and North America, but the price of corn did not drop greatly. The average price in 1840-6 was fifty six shillings and eight pence a quarter. In 1847 it was high as sixty nine shillings and nine pence, but dropped to an average of forty three shillings between 1848 and 1852. It was high again during the abnormal conditions of the Crimea war, but from 1858 to 1877 the average figure was fifty-one shillings and four pence. This does not mean the Free Traders were wrong. The mid century period was a time of rising prices in the world, owing to the discovery of gold in Australia and California, and thus these figures represent a relative drop in the price of corn.. Had the Corn Laws not been repealed, the price of corn would undoubtedly have been much higher. Disaster for the English farmer came later, not from the plains of Europe, but from across the Atlantic in the 1870's and the 1880's, when new machines enabled the North American farmer to develop the wide prairies, and railways and fast steamers could bring his wheat in vast quantities to the United Kingdom at a price which the English farmer could not compete Good stuff Mr. Wood! Anyway some important points I would like to highlight here. First the 19th century was full of reform in the United Kingdom. That kept us as the leaders of the world. Fast forward to today in the USA. That recent mess in Florida, vote wise, needs fixing. The USA has no reason not to be the best and most accurate democracy in the world. I could show you what they use in Brazil for voting these days. They do not use punch cards. Second. Lets say the Brits had kept the Corn Laws in place. Result the continent would have benefited from lower corn costs and their industrial revolution might have beat ours. Nope didn't happen. Britannia Rools (well 19th century anyway) -g-

To: craig crawford who wrote (1091)	3/15/2002 7:01:44 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 1643

Craig, from another one of your links posted. if tariffs lead to great depressions, how come we didn't suffer great depressions in the century leading up to world war one when much of that time we were far more protectionist than in the 20's? By trade I am a process engineer with a background in physics. Like most of my ilk we traditionally regard Economists, Social Scientists, Psychologists, etc, as just another bunch of quacks who don't know what they are talking about -g- Actually I have found new interest in all these topics, especially economics, and have many favorable things to say about the significant contributors. But us physicists have taken up this Economics thing. There is one Economist who us process engineers revere. Pareto. economics.unimelb.edu.au Pareto's first work, Cours d'economie politique (1896-97), included his famous 'law' of income distribution, a complicated mathematical formulation in which he attempted to prove that the distribution of incomes and wealth in society is not random and that a consistent pattern appears throughout history, in all parts of the world and in all societies. (actually the law is real simple and proven beyond reasonable doubt... pb) I had some great links posted on SI to the "New Scientist" magazine on Pareto. Unfortunately they no longer work unless you are a subscriber. I am going to dig up the gist of his stuff elsewhere. Pareto's work, and subsequent contributions will be my "Main Thrust" against protectionist tariffs. However, I'm just here to learn too, I don't really care who "wins" the argument, I just like learning to know what the real deal is -g-

To: craig crawford who wrote (1091)	3/16/2002 7:12:56 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1643

Protectionist tariffs...A bad idea... Pareto's theory of distribution of incomes and wealth in society follows a power law. W = 1/(W^n) Analysis of wealth distributions around the world over the centuries has found Pareto's work very accurate. Here is a link to recent work on Parteo's theory worldlink.co.uk The average wealth within the model economy turns out to follow precisely the kind of 1/(x^n) power law found by Pareto for real economies. But there’s a twist – a nugget of insight of the sort that so often emerges from even rough approximations in physics. Pareto’s data led him to suspect that the power n was always in the range of one to two and that wealth would thus typically follow 20/80-type rules. Bouchaud and Mézard’s results reveal, however, that n is not a universal constant, fixed for all economies. Instead, it turns out to be dependent on the level of trade activity among the various agents. The model shows that n grows with increasing trade activity and higher values of n lead to Pareto laws giving a more equable distribution of wealth. The point to understand here is that more trade equals a better distribution of wealth. Recent research by Aoyama and colleagues has shown that this "small world effect" means that assuming – as Bouchaud and Mézard did – that everyone is linked to everyone else isn’t hopelessly misleading after all. It also means that relatively small expansions in trading networks can bring about big reductions in wealth inequality. The lesson from this heady combination of economics and theoretical physics is clear. By stepping up levels of trade across as wide a field as possible, the inequality that disfigures the global economy can be narrowed If the USA continually resorts to the tariff weapon (such as the lumber trade with Canada) Subject 51596 You can bet your bottom dollar that other countries will resort to the same trick with trade against the USA, or conspire to use some other methods to negate it's effect on their trade. Some pareto stuff from Japan cepa.newschool.edu PARETO'S LAW FOR INCOME OFINDIVIDUALS AND DEBT OF BANKRUPT COMPANIES Abstract We analyze the distribution of income and income tax of individuals in Japan for the fiscal year1998. From the rank-size plots, we find that the accumulated probability distribution of both data obey a power law with a Pareto exponent very close to-2. We also present an analysis of the distribution of the debts owed by bankrupt companies from 1997 to March 2000, which is consistent with a power law behavior with a Pareto exponent equal to-1. This power law is the same as that of the income distribution of companies. Possible implications of these findings for model building are discussed.