Posted on 06/10/2019 5:02:53 PM PDT by cotton1706
From The Great Betrayal jacket (1998):
Pat Buchanan has seen firsthand the devastating effects of America's slavish devotion to global free trade. As a Republican candidate for president in 1992 and 1996, he met plenty of American workers who had been sacrificed to the Global Economy, and saw towns and entire regions abandoned by the industries that once supported them. While America boasts of having a strong economy - a powerful stock market, booming corporate profits, record CEO salaries - the men and women he met on the campaign trail told a far different story. With free trade now supported by both parties, more and more businesses are closing up shop in the United States and moving elsewhere, taking thousands of jobs with them. The result is a sharp drop in Middle America's standard of living - a trend that has continued for twenty-five years - and a national divide between the global elites and those who have been left behind.
Now, in The Great Betrayal, Buchanan charges the architects of NAFTA and GATT with selling out the middle class and turning their backs on the nation. As the voice of popular conservatism, he speaks to the desperation of the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs as a result of the free-trade policies of the Global Economy. He shows how by exporting jobs to Asia and Mexico, the corporate elite is destroying the American dream and profiting from the exploitation of sweatshop labor. Abandoned by their government, American workers are being forced to compete with cheap Third World labor and, inevitably, are losing out.
Basing his arguments on the principles our Founding Fathers and using real-life stories to illustrate the plight of the working class, Buchanan raises an impassioned call to arms.
(Excerpt) Read more at amazon.com ...
"Tariffs at the gates, and free trade in between." That was the American way until the New Deal.
As tariff rates came down, income taxes went up. We stopped taxing foreign goods and started taxing ourselves.
But the reverse is happening now. Income tax rates have been slashed and tariffs are going up. And prosperity reigns once again.
Thanks for posting this, cotton1706.
It seems that for decades now large corporation have been moving their factories overseas. What labor costs they couldn’t reduce by outsourcing the jobs to the Third World, they have reduced by importing Third Worlders here to replace American workers.
Tariffs are taxes on US consumers.
That may be the most simple minded statement I’ve read anywhere in a long time. :)
DU is calling for you as are a billion people in China who love folks like you :)
How dare we interfere with the COMPLETELY above board and even handed Chinese trying to make a profit for goodness’ sake. :)
Go back to bed.
BTW, if a screen name ever fit, yours is it :)
Thanks for the clarity, you leave no doubt.
That’s correct. Tariffs are taxes. But they are indirect taxes that can be avoided by buying a product not subject to the tax, i.e. a product of domestic manufacture.
By contrast, income taxes are a direct tax that cannot be avoided.
Also, just as an FYI, I was a free-trader before I read this book. I knew enough about history (the McKinley tariff, etc.) to know that Pat was telling the truth, and the past thirty years of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-almost Bush or Clinton (but for Trump) has proved it.
I wish the entire payroll tax would be scrapped for a border adjustment tax and maybe a broadening of income tax if needed. Think payroll tax brings in about $1.1 trillion, so not trivial to replace, but that damn thing is an anti-American worker tax. Horrible tax.
Glad to see the Brigadiers are still in full force!
..oh yes ... and in before the first one of Pat’s uncles falls out of a Nazi concentration camp guard tower.
Those who fail to see that free trade, as it has been practiced for decades, has benefited few while devastating many others in the process.
While they may be able to provide goods for their family now, their children will be the ones that suffer in the future and will be unable to provide for their families.
It will work its way up the class chain of Americans, with the final result being only the super rich will be the ones who survive in style. Because they can switch their investment portfolios as needed.
While they publicly poo-poo gold and other precious minerals, they have plenty of all minerals, art, collectibles (both will lose value to a degree as the available purchasers dwindle in numbers). But they don't really care about that as they will have enough in other assets to propel them forward.
The super wealthy has only one real concern, this nation where people are armed sufficiently, which is why they fight to reduce, with the final goal to eliminate, those stockpiles held in private hands. For collectively they could overrun and confiscate their wealth. That scares the caca out of them.
Not exactly sure what you mean by that, haha.
Is your screen name from Shakespeare or WKRP?
I urge you to watch this video
See if after watching the video you might have a different opinion.
No, tariffs are taxes only on those who buy foreign goods.
Income taxes are taxes because you made reportable income, and are far worse to the health of America.
Their backhanded compliment to him is that he lost an uncle in a Nazi concentration camp. He fell out of a guard tower.
P.S.: My tag is also a reference to a funny bit on a long since dead website called the Brunching Shuttlecocks. You might be able to find it on the Wayback Machine. Lots of comedy gold.
Oh, ok.
It’s also a funny line from WKRP, where Lea is out on the ledge.
Sorry, Les, not Lea.
Many have said that Trump’s positions are Buchananistic. I’ve been told that’s just a New York Conservative ... probably too few of them to tell statistically.
Tariffs are a tax you can choose NOT to pay which is always preferable in my book. However, to hear the economists on the news including Fox, you’d think they will lead directly to Armageddon.
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