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To: conimbricenses
Hmmm lets see the program proposed by the man MOST knowledgeable about the US economy should be superceded by one proposed by you? LoL.

Though you seem incapable of finding the data he gathered by writing to people all over the nation it is all there in his papers. The Report on Manufactures and the supporting information takes up two volumes of almost 500 pages each in his papers.

“As the responses to his inquiries poured in and he put the facts together, he came to understand BETTER THAN ANY MAN IN THE COUNTRY what the real problems were and how to surmount them.” He knew we needed a thriving internal market to remove our reliance on foreign markets (which plagues underdeveloped and emerging nations) particularly when war made free trade impossible. He knew we needed to attract more labor and not to the farms but to manufacturing. Unlike the agriculturalists who hated him Hamilton was concentrating on the future. He was also dedicated to developing human potential “To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.” Certainly this generated great fear among the slavers since stimulating their slaves’ minds was anathema to them.

So you are correct that Hamilton's program was not only concerned with revenue but as much with the development of human capabilities. This was far more than simple protectionism. He was attempting to correct the malformation of the American economy created over the 150+ yrs of its subordination to the British Empire and its policies. It was not an ordinary situation.

And, unlike his enemies, he clearly understood the mutual dependence of agriculture and industry and that they would rise and fall together. Encouraging and promoting industry would increase demand for the produces of agriculture and reduce its almost total dependency on foreign demand.

835 posted on 09/21/2010 10:01:29 PM PDT by arrogantsob
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To: arrogantsob
Hmmm lets see the program proposed by the man MOST knowledgeable about the US economy

There's one huge gaping problem with that assertion: you have yet to demonstrate that Hamilton was "the man MOST knowledgeable about the US economy," or anything even remotely close. In fact, most of your claims about Hamilton's supposed economic knowledge have not withstood scrutiny...that is, unless you've managed to find all those "missing" statistical records he supposedly assembled but never bothered transmitting to Congress or anyone else for that matter in his alleged "first ever" study of the new American economy that nevertheless happened to not be published some 6 or more years AFTER the British actually did publish the first study of the same thing.

The Report on Manufactures and the supporting information takes up two volumes of almost 500 pages each in his papers.

Yeah. Because it was a good 70 or so pages itself and went through a half dozen or more drafts, mostly in the pen of Coxe as he sifted through Adam Smith to prepare what was very much a conscious attempt at a rebuttal. And yet in all those assembled pages and drafts, there is virtually no statistical data on the state of U.S. economy. Funny how that worked out.

“As the responses to his inquiries poured in and he put the facts together, he came to understand BETTER THAN ANY MAN IN THE COUNTRY what the real problems were and how to surmount them.”

So you've demonstrated your ability to regurgitate a hagiographic passage from a Hamilton biography. Now exactly what was your point again?

He knew we needed a thriving internal market to remove our reliance on foreign markets (which plagues underdeveloped and emerging nations)

If that is so, then (1) why did he propose to do this with tariffs, which simply DO NOT WORK to achieve that goal, and (2) why did he push through the Jay Treaty, which had explicit provisions that INCREASED our reliance on British markets in the West Indies trade?

Look, I get it that you're on the Hamilton kool-aid. The problem for you is that you will find no respectable economist today in agreement with anything you are saying. That's not to say that there aren't people who agree with it. Protectionist labor unions and the LaRouche cult love Hamiltonian economics. But the rest of the world realized it was bunk a long time ago.

837 posted on 09/21/2010 10:19:11 PM PDT by conimbricenses (Red means run son, numbers add up to nothing.)
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