Posted on 12/19/2009 3:04:59 PM PST by dalight
But this wouldn’t be Congress’s first historic mistake.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 to “buy American” sounded like a good way to protect jobs by keeping out cheaper foreign products. Historians agree it was a mistake, setting off waves of retaliatory tariffs and making the Great Depression worse.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Smoot Hawley merely raised tariffs from 30 % to 50% or more, and the Depression began far before it passed.
However, the premise, that raising taxes and worse, injecting uncertainty into a consumer driven economy is possibly the worst situation imaginable.
Yes you are right.. but at that time.. this was actually a fairly small tax on the economy vs. the real impact of ObamaCare. ObamaCare hits us right between the eyes. For families making more than 59,000 this is the conversion of a benefit to a tax.
Worse, this crap is funded by the twin frauds of cutting Medicare (Not happening) and taxing mega-health plans which will disappear immediately after the tax is passed. So none of this funding will occur. But, the law doesn't go away just because the funding doesn't materialize. So a general tax will have to be imposed then to pay for the cost of the Program. The Democrats are betting this will be someone elses problem as the COSTS start in 2014. So, instead, any taxes collected by this monstrosity will actually go to fund more spending between now and 2014.
Imagine if we were depending on Japan, Germany and China for importing war capacity. Thank you Smoot Hawley.
Are you talking about WWII??? or now. This is a bizarre post.
That is the most incredibly stupid thing I have ever seen in print.
First, Smoot-Hawley effected all imports, not just those from enemy countries.
Second, if there were such an undesirable dependence, then it would have to be cut off anyway, not just taxed to be made less profitable.
You don't cut off your nose in anticipation of one day perhaps wanting to spite your face.
Smoot, and family had interest in sheep, wool, wool mills and finished wool products. He was interested in keeping out imports that undercut his families companies.
Because of Smoot-Hawley world trade collapsed, no one could know if they could export because their price was no longer clearly just shipping costs, but political costs, so yet another leg was pulled out from under the worlds economy.
More jobs were lost then saved.
Smoot a Republican, like Hoover, and FDR all tried to keep labor and material prices high. Higher than people could afford. This really impacted the poorer working class, driving them into the arms of the FDR welfare state, and which leftist, socialist Democrat have been, as they always are of lefty, RINO Republicans for smoothing the socialist path for them.
By the way, Smoot was a Mormon, kind of like how Mitt Romney, a lefty RINO smoothed the path for ObamaCare.
As the Democrats say, “RINO’s, we can’t do it with out them!”
Our exports crashed after Smoot. We were the China of the era.
We lost ten jobs for every job Smoot saved. Typical.
However, some jobs, politically connected jobs, and business with political friends are more equal than others.
Smoot really pulled the free market, can’t we all just trade legitimacy from the US. Germany, Japan all learned that they need to have political and economic spheres, and that the US was just one way as far as trade.
Well, let me inject some troublesome facts into this concept that Smoot-Hawley protected anything.
First, the decimation of the limited world trade at the time paved the way for the rise of The Third Reich and provided the justification for the Japanese to secure oil and resources for their manufacturing and markets for their goods via conquest rather than via trade. The global depression provided the framework for the mass death event knows as WWII.
Smoot-Hawley did nothing to protect American Industrial might, but rather gutted it, second only to the stylings of Franklin Roosevelt who was perfectly happy to attempt to manage all of American manufacturing into the ground in the name of "beating the depression."
I am not arguing that Smoot wasn't a horrible bill or its effects were minimal with respect to World Trade.
I am arguing that Smoot is a duffer compared to ObamaCare at this juncture.. because we are poised at the edge and this is another huge tax increase which forces a cascade of new tax increases in the future as the "taxes" fail to generate the planned revenue and the "savings" via Meidcare Cuts and Cuts in Physician reimbursements either do not materialize because of stark raving political fear, or do materialize via the increased death rate of our senior citizens. This is what seems to be the plan/hope? of these people.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 to "buy American" sounded like a good way to protect jobs by keeping out cheaper foreign products. Historians agree it was a mistake, setting off waves of retaliatory tariffs and making the Great Depression worse.That's one reason Pat Buchanan isn't a historian.
That’s one reason Pat Buchanan couldn’t get elected.
World trade was already deflating before Smoot Hawley passed, it did excelerate the collapse but it did not start it.
And this time, the “kept labor and material costs to high...poor people could not afford them..”
Has been replaced with “once working class people have had their job outsourced to a different country and now are Obama’s and the Dhimmcrats surprising voters”
And that is the unspoken about Globalism, the more successfully it is implemented, the more Democrat Voters are created.
Obamacare is a disaster waiting to happen, regardless of the Smoot Hawley reference, if anything it creates uncertainties in an already uncertain US Business climate as well as raises taxes in the middle of a recession.
“In 1930, the Republican controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the…Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act which, anyone? anyone? Raised or lowered?… Raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the US sank deeper into the Great Depression.”
“Yes you are right.. but at that time.. this was actually a fairly small tax on the economy vs. the real impact of ObamaCare. ObamaCare hits us right between the eyes. For families making more than 59,000 this is the conversion of a benefit to a tax.”
Exactly, the connection to Smoot is strained at best, at the time it merely raised already high tariffs, the Depression had already kicked off at that point in time, Smoot excerbated the problems.
This is going to end badly for America, of that I’m certain of, we will become a Banana Republic with a ruined currency and high opportunity costs and no capital or credit available for small businesses the real driver of the economy.
Isn’t that what Smoot-Hawley did? Raise taxes in the middle of a recession?
Would that be direct taxes, or tariffs?
Taxes. You know, those things that take more money out of your pocket.
Direct taxes, or tariffs?
It really is a simple question.
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