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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (21432)	3/15/2002 9:01:09 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>> There are no reliable unemployment statistics for the United States as a whole prior to 1929. << i have read multiple sources that cite the 18% figure for the 1890's. i did read somewhere that unemployment in new york hit 25% though. i have read that in the 1873 depression unemployment hit around 12%. the depression of 1920-1921 unemployment hit about the same--12% and in the panic of 1907 unemployment didn't even make it into double digits. >> It is, however, an ineluctable fact that tariffs make goods more expensive << i have never denied that in most cases prices rise. >> The beneficiaries are not consumers, but producers, and the government << consumers get paid a wage do they not? tariffs help to raise wages for the working class. >> It is a form of corporate welfare << free trade is corporate welfare for large multinationals. >> Is it wise to make goods more expensive during recessions? << have prices not plummeted dramatically during this latest recession? isn't there talk of deflation? perhaps prices got too low and rising prices would do some good? is it wise to save working american's jobs and strengthen wages during recessions? is it wise to cut income taxes if you're generating greater revenues from import duties during a recession? >> I think the general consensus among historians and economists is no << well i don't think highly of many of these economists. economists know how to scribble on pieces of paper. most don't know how to run a country. >> but governments have an unfortunate tendency to raise taxes during recessions. It's sort of a reflex action. << isn't that what hoover and fdr did? raise taxes during the depression? how come the smoot-hawley tariff gets the blame but not the raising of the income tax? how about the fed raising interest rates? Myths of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff howtobuyamerican.com To be able to accurately explain the affects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, it is necessary first to rid ourselves of popular myths so that we can start with a clean slate and derive conclusions from fact, rather than fantasy. I will list some common myths here, and then disprove them using facts according to history. The myths that prevail, even today, some 61 years after the tariff bill was signed by President Herbert Hoover, are as follows: 1.The Smoot-Hawley Tariff established the highest tariff rates in U.S. history, and the sharp rise in tariff rates caused countless nations to retaliate with tariffs of their own. 2. The Smoot Hawley-Tariff contributed to the instability of the stock market. 3. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was responsible for causing the Great Depression.