President Ronald Reagan delivers farewell address
Posted on 12/10/2004 12:05:13 PM PST by crushelits
Nearly a quarter-century after the Reagan earthquake first rocked our economy, the aftershocks are still a very real and continuing phenomenon. Every tax cut, every regulatory stranglehold broken, every economic shackle unlocked, and every despot or totalitarian regime toppled increases freedom, creativity and entrepreneurship. And in the ultracompetitive world that has sprung from the ashes, "old line" hegemony and subjugation lose their strength.
As Ronald Reagan said in 1981, "We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success--only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive and free. Trust the people."
A corollary to this credo is "trust the market," because people make markets. In the 1970s, the U.S. and most of the noncommunist world were headed toward a European-style welfare state. Huge swaths of the economy were regulated, government spending was out of control and income-tax rates topped out at a sky-high 70%.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Your typical protectionist, excuse me, "true conservative" will take to this op-ed like a vampire to garlic.
Well, if we lose our sugar, steel, (fill in the blank) all that freedom will be lost.
Free people and free markets...Reagan's message was simplicity and perfection itself.
Remember it.
I'm a protectionist. And I'm a huge Reagan, not to mention Calvin Coolidge fan. I'm also a historian. We Americans created the greatest free trade area known to man. And we protected that free trade area with tariffs. The two can and have gone hand in hand. If a foreign nation or company wanted access to the greatest market in the world, they had to pay a price. Sort of an economic cover charge. The money from the tariffs went in to the the Treasury and taxes on the people were low. Reagan knew how to use tariffs when necessary. Harley-Davidson is an example.
"It breaks up nationalities and further hastens the one world government...I therefore am for free trade" Harpo ~ Karl Marx.
But who was really taxed? What other Americans might have lost when trade barriers when up in other countries against our goods? Please get back with me on this.
Why is a tariff always called a trade barrier?? It is not preventing trade. You may say it is sometimes a disincentive but I'll say it again. We created the greatest market in the world. Why is it somehow immoral to charge people if they want access to it? We had tariffs on certain goods at 40 percent and higher in the 20's and we had prosperity through the roof. The same can be said of the high tariff period from the civil war through the 1893 panic and we had surpluses every year to the point where the congress was trying to figure out how to tax less. And this was before the income tax.
As to who is actually taxed. The same as always, the people who purchase the product. Their cost will be higher because they choose to buy a product made in a foreign country as opposed to one made here. If the foreign product is superior, they'll pay the price for it, and the US Treasury will gain some revenue. This is how we did things before the socialists and their absolute free trade cousins got control of policy.
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