Posted on 03/09/2011 8:47:14 PM PST by ianfletcher
Why have nations at all, economically speaking? This question is provoked by the fact that every few months, without fail, somebody writes to me and asks why, if the protectionism I advocate between the U.S. and the rest of the world is rational, why isn't it rational to have tariffs between the various states of the U.S.? And since it clearly doesn't make any sense to have tariffs on trade between, say, California and Oregon, it follows that nations shouldn't practice economic protectionism either. Sounds good. In fact, some people proffer this argument as if it, on its own, settled all questions in the complex field of trade economics.
The first thing to understand is that valuing nations as economic units doesn't entail the idea that every nation is necessarily an appropriate economic unit. We are lucky enough, here in the United States, to live in one that is, but many are not. This is why many of the great protectionist thinkers of the past were also advocates of policies that created larger economic units than were then in existence. For example, the great German protectionist economist Friedrich List, whose ideas still influence policy from Berlin to Beijing today, was also an advocate of the German Zollverein, or customs union. This helped solder the German principalities of his day (Prussia, etc.) into a single German economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
Exactly, it is odd to see the far right and internationalist left agree on the idea that “borders are irrelevant”.
And spot on about free trade, and globalization’s issues can only be solved by the very entity, the nation state, that such policies seek to erase.
It should also be pointed out that Globalism’s financiers are expert at exploiting the murky connection between State guarantees and private businesses, for example State Insurance of the Banking Industry as we saw in Iceland.
Such promises to pay are implied in everything from state bond issues to pension funds.
I’m not sure that tariffs between states would be all that horrible either.
Well, thankfully our founding fathers did.
Well, thankfully our founding fathers did.
economics bump for later.....
Is a closed economy a bad thing? Isn't the world itself a closed economy? Tariffs are just controls, and well-conceived controls are very good things (e.g. traffic lights).
Not between the United States, they’re not.
Let’s not forget it was tariffs that caused the Civil War.
Not between these United States, they’re not.
Let’s not forget it was tariffs that caused the Civil War
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