Posted on 06/17/2022 8:17:09 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
How did John Rutledge know Reaganomics would be such a smashing success?
In December 1981 the Journal ran a contrarian op-ed by Mr. Rutledge, then president of Claremont Economics Institute. It was the most prescient prediction by an economist I have ever read.
Mr. Rutledge predicted that inflation would decline faster than expected; that interest rates would fall, not rise, despite the growing deficit; and the economy and financial markets wouldn’t slump, but soar. It all happened.
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Powell, Yellin’, Bixiden, and all Congressional Assistant DemocrRATs who support same need a good political thrashin’.
Craving him.
We need to cut marginal income tax rates and put up across the board import tariffs.
When he died, it was almost like losing a family member. He embodied all that was good about America, and inspired others to do the same. Greatest President of my lifetime (though DJT could have been with 2 terms, and may still). Reagan was THE perfect person to lead the Free World against the Soviets.
Tax rates, yes, but tariffs never worked. Including when Bush/Obama/Trump tried them. Or at the start of the Great Depression.
Tax rates, yes, but tariffs never worked. Including when Bush/Obama/Trump tried them. Or at the start of the Great Depression.
Horse hokey. Every other country uses them very effectively. Only USA has stupid economic types that still believes the Smoot Hawley fairly tale.
History lesson. Smoot Hawley was signed into law in 1930 and didn’t really take effect until the next year, 1931 almost 2 years AFTER the start of the Great Depression.
Reagan’s “There you go again”, was the perfect way to deal with critics
The Smoot Hawley Tariff of 1930 was virtually the same as the Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922 that preceded it.
Another history lesson. In 1865 the United States was devastated by four years of Civil War. Great Britain was the world’s premier military and economic power.
Thirty-five years later, in 1900, the United States was the greatest industrial power on the planet. It was also arguably the most innovative and creative economy whose inventors and companies were leading technological revolutions in many industries and would create an entire new industry (aerospace) in the next decade. It also had an emerging middle class, driving domestic demand for the stream of innovative new products flowing from America’s factories.
During that thirty five year period the US intentionally had the highest tariffs in its history. The purpose of the tariffs was to protect growth of manufacturing from predatory European firms seeking to export their wares to the fast growing U.S. market. In addition the federal government was fully funded by tariffs and duties. There was no individual or corporate income tax.
Military spending was also high during the 3 1/2 decades after the Civil War. The US government funded a military occupation of the southern states until 1876, fought successive wars with Native American nations during that period and maintained a string of military bases throughout the west to protect settlers, subdue native populations, and secure the southern border from invasion. The tariffs also supported the building of a great navy which allowed the U.S. to defeat a European power (Spain) in a global war and acquire the Philippines.
Academics and politicians conveniently overlook the economic policies in place when the U.S. emerged as the greatest economic power on the planet. They ignore sound money, backed by gold. They ignore fiscal responsibility by government. They ignore light regulation and the absence of the Federal Reserve. They also ignore the tax structure and the limited powers of the federal government. The federal government was not micromanaging the economy or the lives of people at the local level nor was it actively using punitive taxes on wealth creation to redistribute wealth.
I was in grad school (MBA) during Reagan’s second term when I discovered how politics had such an impact on our lives...and how truly great RR was as President.
Reagan was the last pro-America president...until Donald J. Trump.
We reaffirm our belief in the protective tariff to extend needed protection to our productive industries. We believe in protection as a national policy, with due and equal regard to all sections and to all classes. It is only by adherence to such a policy that the well being of the consumers can be safeguarded that there can be assured to American agriculture, to American labor and to American manufacturers a return to perpetrate American standards of life. A protective tariff is designed to support the high American economic level of life for the average family and to prevent a lowering to the levels of economic life prevailing in other lands.
In the history of the nation the protective tariff system has ever justified itself by restoring confidence, promoting industrial activity and employment, enormously increasing our purchasing power and bringing increased prosperity to all our people.
The tariff protection to our industry works for increased consumption of domestic agricultural products by an employed population instead of one unable to purchase the necessities of life. Without the strict maintenance of the tariff principle our farmers will need always to compete with cheap lands and cheap labor abroad and with lower standards of living.
That right there should have been a big warning sign that the whole plan was to turn the U.S. from a sovereign nation into a globalist empire. If you “acquire” a foreign land without turning it into new U.S. states, then tariffs in the U.S. completely undermine you.
The whole purpose of “acquiring” these foreign lands was to replace the cheap sources of labor that previously existed in the U.S. but was disappearing through the abolition of slavery and the introduction of labor laws here.
The United States didn’t really become a sea power until Teddy Roosevelt launched the Great White Fleet in 1907. These were built after the Spanish-American War.
And while these were modern steel warships they were obsolete as soon as they were launched. Britain’s 1906 HMS Dreadnought had changed everything.
One factor leading to America seeking to be a global seapower was Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 1890 book “The Influence of Sea Power upon History”. This book had a worldwide impact, all of the major powers adopted its lessons. Mahan was the president of the US Naval War College. Teddy Roosevelt corresponded with Mahan about his theories before the Spanish American War.
There’s another work on strategic theory written around that time that has continued to have influence ever since, Halford Mackinder’s “The Geographical Pivot of History”.
A protective tariff had a different impact in 1860 than it does in the income tax era.
In the 1800s the tariff was the sole means of collecting taxes. This meant that the majority of the tax burden fell on the agricultural states of the southern United States.
The 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” nearly erupted in open war between Andrew Jackson and South Carolina. Civil war 30 years earlier. It became a moot issue when the 1833 compromise tariff was passed.
But the grievance of the agricultural states didn’t die and the high Morrill Tariff of 1861 was one of the factors leading to war.
The novelist Charles Dickens was publisher of an English journal at the time and he wrote that the tariff was the reason that Lincoln chose war instead of recognizing Confederate independence.
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