Posted on 03/03/2018 9:13:14 PM PST by WilliamIII
Typical silk-shirted Larry Kudlow. The only time he got his hands dirty at work is when his pen leaked. He’s never lamented the loss of a single factory in his life. The people who work in those places are just doing icky Jobs Americans Don’t Want Anymore. They will be much happier on welfare taking oxycontin.
Once upon a time, back in his college years, Larry belonged to SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society.
But communism didn’t pay well, so he turned his coat and became a wealthy, coke snorting investment banker.
Well some of those clunkers, the pickup trucks, may have been resold to the Middle East were Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorists slapped heavy machine guns or a cannon in the back turning them into “technicals”:
“Taxes are always bad. Always. “
I’m with you. Because who needs water supplies, sewers, roads, bridges, a military, a CDC, a police force, a fire dept and other such pointless and unneeded wasteful spending. The 3rd world has the answer.
I never thought we see the day that higher taxes are supported on Free Republic. Certainly there are public spending policies that have positive externalities. The vast vast majority of government spending does not fit in this category.
It is certainly the case that the proposed tariffs are not intended to raise revenues to pay for police and fire departments as you suggest. The tariffs are being sold as benefiting the US economy. That is clearly not true. Tariffs can only cause harm. I’m surprised anyone in 2018 believes we can tax ourselves into prosperity.
The Constitutional Convention gave the federal gov’t taxing powers that didn’t exist under the Articles of Confederation.
Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, converted the debt of the United States into an asset and raised the ‘Not Worth A Continental’ US dollar to par with gold through the use of tariffs and a gold standard.
Hamilton accepted as payment for tariffs either gold or dollars, and promised to pay interest on US debt in gold.
This had the immediate effect of making US debt highly desirable to investors, and raised the almost worthless dollar to par with gold.
This is called a Funded Public Debt, something the genius of Hamilton understood when few others did. It requires taxes to work. The “always bad, creating deadweight loss” kind.
You can't have 'free trade' with a Communist nation!
There are national security concerns in keeping these industries sound.
It is a consumption tax, that one doesn’t have to pay if one buys an American product.
Yes. One doesn't pay a consumption tax as long as one does not understand the "economic incidence" or "actual incidence" of a tax. Even beer drinkers know that tariffs will increase costs and destroy jobs.
The security concerns are a red herring used by those who advocate higher taxes. The US produces 80% of the steel it uses. If need be, that could be turned into 100% overnight.
A “major calamity” for globalism is a good thing.
“Tariffs can only cause harm. “
Damn those fools in the First Congress whose very first substantive bill was the Tariff Act of 1789 that mentioned its intent to protect American industry.
Just imagine what this country could be if they hadn’t hobbled our growth from the very start.
Why, in WWII we might have had an Arsenal of Democracy to use against our foes, instead of being unable to produce our own arms!
Japan’s industrial policy sure has turned it into a shit hole, huh.
We don’t really disagree that “all taxes create deadweight loss”. But it’s telling just half of the story if you don’t mention the benefits created by the tax, like in the example given by Pelham. A tax to fund roads would be lead to overall gain for the community compared to private roads financed by private tolls. A tax to fund a military to defend and deter is a gain compared to being invaded and looted. Etc...
Tell the whole story, not just the convenient half.
Yeah, compare pics of Hiroshima and Detroit in 1945 to what they look like now and you’d think that Japan had defeated the United States. Funny how Japan’s protective trade policies ruined their economy. Or not.
Where trade is involved there’s the messy world of empirical evidence versus the neat and tidy world of academic modeling.
He’s looking after his own country 2020 maybe a little early but as an opportunity to give steel production a good boost i think its a good thing and as a way to show the rest of the world how much they should not take the USA for granted its even better
No one is for 'higher taxes', what they are for is a fair system of trade.
The Chinese are putting tariffs on our imported goods.
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