Remaking of Alexander Hamilton

Accuracy in Academia ^ | May 8, 2015 | Malcolm A. Kline

[Brass Lamp]

Hamilton and other Federalists wanted to keep much of the British political system intact, minus the monarch, including the British mercantilist system (central banking, Corn Laws and other tariffs).

So...they paid their tea-tax? You see, that's a product of a centralized merchantilist government.

Hamilton's goal in centralization wasn't the creation of a welfare state, it was in turning America into an industrial and military power.

...through a type of welfare. I use the word here, consistently, to mean 'forcing those who can and will support themselves to also support they who cannot or will not support themselves'. It does not cease to be a welfare program because you feel differently about the recipient.

The debates at the time weren't pro or anti-welfare state, which didn't exist.

Of course not. That's not how Fabian socialism works. They were still debating the principles of government and whether we should proceed from those principles which, as it happens, allow and necessarily develop welfare schemes. Hamilton strongly promoted ideas which are essential and foundational to the modern welfare state without any teleological reference to EBT cards and Section 8 housing.

It was a debate between agrarians vs. supporters of industrialization.

Were it as simple as that, there might have been two factions clamoring for the same all-powerful, centralized government to collectivize and distribute all the goodies, the only difference between the two being their intended recipient. Would you have supported the same program of national socialization to support the farm industry?

Hamilton was an heir to William Pitt, not a precursor to Franklin Roosevelt or LBJ.

[1]There is nothing about the first clause which supports the second clause. [2]FDR and LBJ couldn't have done it without him.

A Social Security system or food stamps weren't on anyone's radar screen at the time, and to retroject the Great Society policies onto Hamilton and Washington is beyond absurd.

Calling the Hamiltonian agenda of the late 18th century "conservative" because it would eventually lead to something you happen to like at a later time is absurd.

[ek_hornbeck]

...through a type of welfare. I use the word here, consistently, to mean 'forcing those who can and will support themselves to also support they who cannot or will not support themselves'. It does not cease to be a welfare program because you feel differently about the recipient

By that definition, both building a highway and giving food stamp credits to the un/underemployed are "types of welfare." In a sense, you're right, I do feel differently about spending Federal dollars on infrastructure vs. food stamps because I believe that the former is a Constitutionally legitimate function of government while the latter is not. If you take your argument to its logical extreme, then paying soldiers is also "a form of welfare."

As for tariffs, they are by far the least intrusive form of taxation. If we hadn't scrapped them in favor of free trade, perhaps we wouldn't be stuck with an income tax today.