What Would Really Happen If California Seceded?

SHTFPLAN ^ | 08/02/2017 | Daniel Lang

[SeekAndFind]

There are two kinds of people who support the Calexit movement. People living in California who think that their state would be far better off without being hitched to the rest of the union, and people living in every other state who can’t wait to get rid of California.

I’d wager that latter of those two know something that most Calexit supporters in California do not. They know that the golden state is a toxic influence on the rest of the country. It’s become a breeding ground for leftists ideologies, and the people who believe those ideologies have run the state into the ground. As California slips further into debt and the cost of living mounts, those people are moving away to states where there are more opportunities.

But rather than abandoning the beliefs that turned their previous home into an expensive bureaucratic hellhole, they often vote and behave just like they did in California. They turn cities in conservative states into bastions leftist deterioration… little microcosms of where they came from.

That’s why it’s pretty obvious that if California really did secede from the United States, it wouldn’t suddenly be unshackled from the rest of the country. The state wouldn’t become some beacon of progressive values and prosperity. Without the balancing influence of the rest of the country, which keeps California in check to some degree, everything wrong with the state would be amplified. Rather than being free to pursue some grand destiny, California would only be free to pursue the same wrongheaded policies that have driven it towards such a stark, downward trajectory.

That fact was on display recently, when Calexit leader Shankar Singam went on Tucker Carlson Tonight. During the interview, Tucker challenged the notion that California would be able to manage itself properly. He brought up the fact that hundreds of thousands of upper and middle class people have left the state in recent years, which to any sane person would be an indication that their government is doing something terribly wrong to drive these people away.

Singam would beg to differ. He admitted, without any coaxing, that this wave of fleeing middle class Californians is a good thing, because it makes room for more immigrants, and helps spread Californian ideals to the rest of the country.

You heard that correctly. He thinks it’s good to push out productive citizens and replace them low skilled migrants.

It’s obvious what would happen if California became it’s own country. The middle class would be hollowed out. It would immediately turn into a banana republic, where you are either a wealthy elitist or an impoverished peasant who is dependent on the state. Though it wouldn’t be in California’s best interest to secede, it’s apparent that America can’t get rid of this cesspool fast enough.

[grey_whiskers]

We’d need to extend the Wall.

[Amendment10]

""Unconstitutional federal taxes" were made constitutional by the 16th Amendment."

Without looking x, can you tell me why the Founding States made the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I?

With all due respect x, since the state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices who decided Gibbons v. Ogden had clarified that taxation is a basic form of government control, you’re basically saying that the 16th Amendment effectively repealed the 10th Amendment which is wrong.

"Congress is authorized to lay and collect taxes, &c. to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States. This does not interfere with the power of the States to tax for the support of their own governments, nor is the exercise of that power by the States an exercise of any portion of the power that is granted to the United States. In imposing taxes for State purposes, they are not doing what Congress is empowered to do. Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.



In fact, after the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, the Supreme Court once again reflected on the unique powers of the states to tax and spend to exercise the unique powers of the state, INTRAstate healthcare for example.

"Direct control of medical practice in the states is obviously [emphases added] beyond the power of Congress.” —Linder v. United States, 1925.

[semaj]

CalExit= Venezuela

[Carl Vehse]

DiogenesLamp @42: "the people who were paying 75% of the cost of Running the Federal government"

If you are referring to the South prior to the Civil War, can this be substantiated?

A quick check found numerous articles that suggested the South did not pay 75% of the cost of running the Federal government, including the following articles:

"How much of federal tax revenue came from the South before the Civil War?"

"What portion of tariffs was paid by Southern states before American Civil War?"

"#FlagMyths: 'The Civil War Was Fought Over... Tariffs'"

"Five myths about why the South seceded"

[DiogenesLamp]

If you are referring to the South prior to the Civil War, can this be substantiated?

Yes it can.

A quick check found numerous articles that suggested the South did not pay 75% of the cost of running the Federal government, including the following articles:

"How much of federal tax revenue came from the South before the Civil War?"

"What portion of tariffs was paid by Southern states before American Civil War?"

"#FlagMyths: 'The Civil War Was Fought Over... Tariffs'"

"Five myths about why the South seceded"

I looked through all your links. None of them get it right. They argue that because the bulk of the tariff collections occurred in New York, the tariff's were paid by Northerners.

This is absolutely incorrect. The end consumer pays the costs of tariffs, and the vast bulk of Import goods were in payment for Southern exports. Yes, the South produced 75% of all monetary value for exports, meaning that money coming back was to pay for good purchased from the South.

Value of Northern exports was 25%. In other words, European money, goods and services earned by the North only amounted to 25% of the total.

The story is far more complex than most people realize, but once you dissect it down to it's simplest elements, the South was creating 75% (some say as high as 83%) of all import traffic, and the tariffs were being collected in New York, because the system was jiggered to work that way. 75% of the money actually belonged to the South.

Yes, the tariff's were getting collected in New York, but the monetary value for which those imports were payment, were earned by the South. I can show you the numbers if you like.

[Carl Vehse]

"The end consumer pays the costs of tariffs"

That was discussed in several articles. One stated:

"[I]t should be considered that because some supplies from overseas were landed in New York and then carried south, southerners as final consumers indirectly paid bigger than 8% portion of tariffs (by no mean 75-80%)."

And that was supported by excerpts from 1857 and 1861.

Another article noted:

"If there's a more esoteric argument that says somehow the South ultimately bought 80% of those goods and therefore experienced the markup that came from them being taxes, I haven't seen it, but it would be interesting to read and parse."

The article also noted that the alleged burden of paying the cost of tariffs was not included in the secession declarations.

Thus there is no reason to accept your cavalierly dismissing the contents, including additional references, of the various linked articles I proved earlier.

[where's_the_Outrage?]

[boxlunch]

Bump to bookmark this. Great post

[longhorn too]

“The United States would tip over???”

Naw, that is Guam!

[DiogenesLamp]

That was discussed in several articles. One stated:

"[I]t should be considered that because some supplies from overseas were landed in New York and then carried south, southerners as final consumers indirectly paid bigger than 8% portion of tariffs (by no mean 75-80%)."

And where do they get this conclusion from? My argument is much simpler. 75%-83% of all European imports were payment for Southern exports.

New York intercepted the shipping (because of the Navigation act of 1817 and because the North East totally controlled the shipping industry) and they collected the tariffs, added up their highly inflated shipping costs, banking fees, insurance and warehousing costs (all set higher than the market rates because they had a monopoly due to Washington policy and subsidies) and what was left over got sent to the actual owners of the profits in the South.

And that was supported by excerpts from 1857 and 1861.

It is a conclusion in which they haven't shown their math. Show me the math.

Another article noted:

"If there's a more esoteric argument that says somehow the South ultimately bought 80% of those goods and therefore experienced the markup that came from them being taxes, I haven't seen it, but it would be interesting to read and parse."

I don't know why you posted that. The author says he hasn't seen proof, and this does not mean there is no proof. I've seen the proof.

The article also noted that the alleged burden of paying the cost of tariffs was not included in the secession declarations.

All the more reason you should not be paying attention to the people who are trying to whitewash the discussion. Yes, it was discussed in the secession declarations.

This one always gets ignored because it doesn't say what people want to believe.

Thus there is no reason to accept your cavalierly dismissing the contents, including additional references, of the various linked articles I proved earlier.

I didn't ask you to accept it. I asked you to look at the evidence. The evidence is simple. The South produced 75-83% of all export value. The imports were their return payment for their exports. Trade must balance, and if the South has earned 75-83% of the total European money to pay for those exports, those imports belong to the people in the South who produced the money.

Now the whole system is made confusing by the fact that the protectionist policies of Washington heavily favored the North, and they put such taxes on the imports of any European product that was like that manufactured in the North, that it was cheaper for the South to buy the Northern manufactured items than it was to buy the European manufactured items and pay the large taxes on them.

It ended up being an unnatural "triangle trade" in which the Europeans sold to the North, the North Sold to the South, and the South sold to Europe, with the trade between the North and the South being the unnatural part of the Triangle.

From the South's point of view, the purchase of Northern goods at artificially inflated prices versus the purchase of cheaper and higher quality European manufactured goods, was not a good deal for them, but because the laws were jiggered to favor this sort of protectionist policies for Northern industries, the South didn't have much of a choice.

[DiogenesLamp]

Here are some numbers from a contemporary book written in 1860.

Now either PeaRidge, or central_va (I forget which) has a source that is Official US government Numbers, and they are even worse (from the perspective of the North) than those I have posted above.

Perhaps they will notice this message and post the source to those numbers once again.

[Carl Vehse]

"And where do they get this conclusion from? My argument is much simpler."

The conclusion was gotten from the references and excerpts provided:
North America, its agriculture and climate, by Robert Russell, Edinburgh 1857.
The Cotton Kingdom, Vol. 1, by Frederick Law Olmsted, New York – London, 1861.

"It is a conclusion in which they haven't shown their math. Show me the math."

You are the one making the assertion, "Well, the people who were paying 75% of the cost of Running the Federal government had the Sh*t beaten out of them by the other 75% of the Union that wasn't previously paying that tax bill." The onus is on you. I only provided articles with multiple links to contemporary pre-Civil War references that case doubt on such a claim.

Now you have shifted over to arguing that the percent of U.S. exports from southern states must equal the percent value of imports going to the southern states or else that counts as supporting the northern states or the federal government controlled by the northern states.

"Yes, it was discussed in the secession declarations."

The South Carolina declaration only mention "tariff" twice, and it was associated with slave-trade and restriction of slave-trading commerce in other states.

The lack of emphasis in the declarations about tariffs was discussed in "How much of federal tax revenue came from the South before the Civil War?"

[Carl Vehse]

Your text image comes from page 73 of Southern wealth and northern profits, as exhibited in statistical facts and official figures by Thomas Prentice Kettel (New York: G.W. & J.A. Wood, 1860). The image does not substantiate your initial claim. Furthermore, Kettel's book is written from the basis of the"fallacy of the theory of black equality" (p. 149) and the disaster of the "experiment in humanizing blacks." Kettel details his basis supporting the South and its economic institution of slavery (p. 167ff):

"A bountiful Providence has those sunny climes with a soil of the utmost fertility, and has created beings whose constitutions are adapted to it. He has not endowed them with intelligence, but they remain in their native Africa to-day what they were at the date of the deluge, an unprogressive and savage race of cannibals. The white has emerged from the pastoral state, and risen gradually to the highest development of the human intellect.... The African, a docile and capable worker was placed in his hands. He educate him in the path of industry, made him useful to humanity, turned him from the worship of idols to the knowledge of the true God, and raised him from the grade of an animal to the semblance of manhood. The 4,000,000 blacks and their descendants now in the United States, have been raised from the cannibal and troglodyte state to a condition far above that of many white men. This has not been done of their own volition, but through the instrumentality of the slave-trade, ministering to the wants of humanity under the direction of Divine Providence."

[DiogenesLamp]

The conclusion was gotten from the references and excerpts provided: North America, its agriculture and climate, by Robert Russell, Edinburgh 1857. The Cotton Kingdom, Vol. 1, by Frederick Law Olmsted, New York – London, 1861.

That may be where he gets his raw data, but the conclusions he reached do not follow from the raw data. He's ignoring a lot of relevant information to reach his conclusions.

You are the one making the assertion, "Well, the people who were paying 75% of the cost of Running the Federal government had the Sh*t beaten out of them by the other 75% of the Union that wasn't previously paying that tax bill." The onus is on you. I only provided articles with multiple links to contemporary pre-Civil War references that case doubt on such a claim.

And here I thought the proof was clear in the information I provided. Let's try this again.

You sell 75% of the export value to Europe. Let's call it 200 Million worth of Value.

Your neighbor sells 25% of the export value to Europe. Let's call it 70 million.

Europe pays a total of 270 Million back to the United States. 200 Million goes to you, and 70 Million goes to your neighbor.

Now the Government puts a tax on this money. You pay the tax for the 200 Million, your Neighbor pays the tax for the 70 Million.

If you run the numbers, your tax equates to 75% of the Total tax, while your Neighbor's tax equates to 25% of the Total tax. (This is assuming the tax rates were equal, which they were not. The Neighbor was getting a lower rate.)

If you are not following, let me know where I need to clarify something.

Let us settle this part before we go on to discuss the fact that the Federal government was taking a bunch of this tax money and spending it to subsidize Northern Shipping, Railroads, Fishing industries, and so forth.

Let us also settle this part before we go on to discuss the fact that the taxes were lopsided in application, with products bought by the South from Europe paying a higher tax rate than products bought by the North from Europe, in which they paid a lower tax rate.

[Vision]

America loses some cash and most of its problems and becomes a stronger country.

[DiogenesLamp]

Your text image comes from page 73 of Southern wealth and northern profits, as exhibited in statistical facts and official figures by Thomas Prentice Kettel (New York: G.W. & J.A. Wood, 1860). The image does not substantiate your initial claim.

The numbers from the Official record are even worse for your desired position. Hopefully either central_va or Pearidge will be along shortly to provide the source for them.

[Slyfox]

Removal of all military bases? >>><<< They’d probably charge huge rental fees.

I was thinking more like the US could move the bases directly to the east tucked inside the states to the east of CA. And if CA gets attacked ... well then too bad.

[laplata]

Good idea.

[Kickass Conservative]

They can do what they want as long as they purchase my Home at today’s Market Value, to be paid in Gold Bullion.

[mewzilla]

Lefties are like the Borg.