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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (26241)	5/21/2002 1:47:48 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 59480

>> I think a reasonable rate for any tax is one that has a minimal impact on people's lives and on the economy << tariffs fill that bill. the oppressive and intrusive income tax that replaced tariffs does not! Trariffs have a lot of impact on the economy. They don't require most people to do as much paperwork so they might be less intrusive in some ways, but they also discriminate against some goods and in favor of others. If you want something produced in another country it will cost more, or it might not even be available. If you want something produced domestically from a company that used to face foreign competition you might have to settle for paying more and getting less because their is now less competition. no, that would be the libertarian position. i believe tariffs are an effective tool for the government to regulate the economy for the benefit of the nation. I believe any but the most minimal regulation of the economy almost invariably works to the detriment of the economy and the nation. i am arguing that it was the founding father's wisdom that resulted in it being put in the constitution in the first place. free traders want to turn their backs to that wisdom. A number of them also owned slaves, would that be ok for us? I don't dispute that they had wisdom or that we can learn things from them but not everything they said or did was a good idea. most of the stupid things congress does is in violation of the constitution, under the guise of their actions being constitutional. Agreed, a lot of what congress does is of dubious constitutionality. i'm sorry but you are completely naive in this regard. you think free trade leads to less control by the elites? hmm...in 1949 the top 1% held 21% of the national wealth. with free trade for the last half century the top 1% now control over 40% or twice as much. it is even more extreme on a global scale. Do you have any evidence of causation, or even corelation, rather then just the fact that the concentration increased while free trade also increased? Lots of other things increased at the same time. If you have restricted trade with the government deciding who can buy or sell or what penalty or subsidy the trade will get then you concentrate power in people who have enough political influence to get such benefits for themselves and penaltees for those who compete against them. You also make consumers pay a lot more to rich and powerful people who can influence the government to put such barriers in place. A perfect example of this is sugar sales in the US. We pay a higher price for sugar then the rest of the world because influential sugar farmers get congress to keep out foreign sugar. ahh, but freedom without restraint is anarchy. Free trade is not anarchy. Anarchy is no government at all, not minimal government or no government in a particular area. then why do we want any government at all? thomas jefferson said, "It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all." that is why the founding fathers agreed that congress should regulate commerce. to secure our rights. How could congress secure our rights by putting in place trade barriers? How does free trade hurt our rights? >> If you try to prevent someone from buying foreign goods you limit their freedom. << and this is necessarily a bad thing? how about the government preventing boeing from selling cruise missiles to saddam hussein? is that limiting freedom? is that bad? The harm (retricting the trade) is in this case far less then the good (or the avoidence of harm) from keeping weapons out of Saddam's hands. How does this apply to sugar restrictions? If I can get cheaper sugar would I blow things up drop poision gas on people I don't like and invade small oil producing countries? I don't think so. ree trade absolutely contributes to the destruction of our moral fabric. theodore roosevelt told us so over a century ago. If you, or if TR makes an argument that this is true I will listen to the argument. But the only argument you provide is that TR said so and the only argument TR provides (in your quote at least) is his own statement with no facts or logic to back it up. Tim