Though that line is often offered by labor unions and industrialists to achieve protection for their industries, it is an economically illegitimate argument. It is a matter of economic fact and mathematical proof that protective tariffs do more to diminish the economic welfare of a country as a whole than any economic gain in the protected industry to be achieved from it. This is so because the tariff removes a segment of the consumer surplus, but only a portion of that segment is returned to the economy by way of the protected industry in the consumer surplus. The remainder is split between government revenues from the tariff (which tend to be wasted since government expenditures are less efficient than market expenditures of the same ammount), and two segments of dead weight loss - meaning it is removed from the economy and lost entirely.
The South put all their marbles on slavery and it put them behind industrially and after getting off the ground
Actually the south placed its marbles in agriculture. In some aspects of that agriculture, namely the large plantantions, slavery was the dominant method of labor and, in being so, was a sinful moral blight on that labor market. But slavery was not the reason for the southern economy - it was an attribute of portions of that economy. The southern economy developed not out of some planned conspiracy but like any economy develops - out of the market areas in which its strengths exist. Resource wise, the southern portion of the nation was and still is prime for certain types of agricultural production. Because agriculture happened to be its resource and because the south had comparitive advantages in the agricultural market, its economy developed around agriculture and the export of agricultural goods. In a similar manner, regions that are endowed with other resources, such as a large coal deposit, will tend to develop economies that best employ those resources. In 1860, the north was relatively well endowed with resources that offered it comparative advantages in industrialization.
It went from tariff=good to tariff=bad in a few decades for the South.
The south consistently opposed protective tariffs in the national government for at least four decades prior to the war. The change you speak of is simply not there.
So you believe Bush was wrong in protecting the vital war industry of steel from foreign dumping?
Yes. I do. I also agree with Milton Friedman that we should be sending letters of thanks to countries who are percieved to engage in the act so-called as "dumping." The laws of economics backed by mathematical proof indicate that as a country we in fact benefit when other countries do this.
The reason the South had no industrial base to protect was because they laid their marbles on slavery. Their mistake.
First off, you are incorrect on that assertion. They laid their marbles in agriculture. An attribute of the cash crop portion of that agricultural market was plantation slavery. As I have noted, that slavery was a sinful blight. But it was not the southern economy any more than labor unions today are the northern economy. Second, the south's agricultural economy was anything but a mistake. It was an efficient use of the south's natural resources of climate, soil, and land that developed as such by way of the market. Under capitalism, steel refineries tend to develop in countries and regions where there is steel. Just the same, agriculture tends to develop where there is land and climate to provide optimal conditions for that agriculture.
It is no accident that corn is grown on the great plains. It is no accident that oil is refined in Texas. It is no accident that coal is mined and processed in upper appalachia. It is no accident that fishing occurs off the new england coast. It is no accident that shipbuilding occurs on major waterways and in deep sea ports. The market leads to these specializations because each of these geographic regions has comparative advantages toward that particular industry or economic sector.
He didn't tax us to death, we beat the South.
Your assertion is a fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Economic studies of the war indicate that the protectionist Morrill tariff severely hurt the northern economy. This was noticed within a year of its adoption as trade with Europe declined to virtually nothing of its previous free trade levels. Unemployment and economic harship struck several northern industries as a result, just as the ceasing of trade in the south due to the blockade produced devastation there. The north was still endowed with resources of manpower and military production though and was accordingly able to eventually win. The fact that its win followed the tariff on the timeline says nothing of the tariff being the cause of that win any more than eating sandwich yesterday would cause you to win the lottery today, though the latter event would follow the former.
Was the North's tariffs all Lincoln's idea or was Congress involved in passing them?
It was a collaborative effort of the 1860 Republican platform. Northerners in Congress passed the Morrill tariff in two steps. The House passed it in May 1860 and the Senate passed it a few days before Lincoln's inauguration. They did so with Lincoln's backing as Lincoln advocated a tariff hike in his campaign. He also told an audience before his inauguration that if the bill was not through the senate by the end of the session he would make it a top legislative priority to pass it.
Was was the level of the tariff before Lincoln took office?
The average tariff rate, which had been adopted in a tax cut in 1857, was about 18% prior to the Morrill bill. At the time that rate was considered very pro-free trade on a world scale. The Morrill tariff immediately doubled that average rate for 1862 and then hiked it to almost 50% by the last two years of the war.
Or winning a war?
They weren't used for winning the war because they were not revenue tariffs. They were protectionist tariffs. Theoretically, had Lincoln wanted to raise revenues for the war, he could have pushed through a modest tariff hike of a couple percentages. This action would have retained most of the country's trade while bringing in greater revenue. But the hike that they adopted was massive and protectionist. It resulted in wiping out trade with Europe almost entirely.
To use a modern analogy, if the government today had a flat income tax rate of 15% and needed more revenue, it could probably raise it to 18% and achieve that end. But if it raised the rate to 75%, revenue would disapear because the tax itself would discourage the reciept of income and people would stop working as much. The same thing happens in a tariff-based tax system when tariffs are raised so high that they severely discourage and inhibit trade.
That tariff was in 1861, wasn't it?
It was passed in two stages. The House adopted it in May 1860. The Senate adopted it in February 1861. So the debate on it was waged from spring of 1860 to the end of the 1861 winter, a period encompassing the same time secession occurred.
I said the South liked tariffs decades earlier when they had to compete with Indian cotton.
My question then is how many decades earlier? Cause the south consistently pushed for free trade from the 1820's until the war. In fact, South Carolina almost seceded in the early 1830's after the yankees passed a high tariff.
You're making things up. Tariffs went up and down for decades prior to 1861.
Not really. There was a consistent downward trend in tariffs toward free trade from 1846 to 1860. The north pushed through a tax hike in 1860-61. Prior to 1846, tariffs fluctuated more with the south consistently opposing the high rates dating back to the 1820's.
Their purpose was to get American industry off the ground
As I noted previously, that claim is an illegitimate argument that is economically unsupportable and in fact directly contradicted by mathematical analysis of trade and tariffs. This has been known since David Ricardo developed the modern economic study of trade and tariffs in the 1810's. The southern congressional delegation also emphasized it at length in detailed analyses before Congress dating up to the eve of the war.
and to finance the government.
Protective tariffs do not function well in financing the government because they discourage the very same action upon which that revenue is dependent - imports.
Marx also praised the founding fathers.
No, not really. In his quote he only attributes to them a revolution of the middle class, which was but a stage in his view of history before communism would be achieved. Marx disliked that middle class and denounced it throughout his writings.
Marxist "sympathizer"? Is that the clsoest you can get? LOL
By political affiliation, McPherson comes from the far left wing of the modern Democrat party. That wing sympathizes heavily with marxist groups, though it is still Democrat in political affiliation.
LOL You have to change the meaning of words to get what you want out of Marx' quote.
Much to the contrary, and in fact it appears that you are doing exactly what you speak of yourself. You claim Marx's quote was an innocent item of praise for worker's rights. Yet it is a simple fact of Marx's writing that he used the terms "working class" to denote proletarian revolutionary concepts - meaning communism. Just the same without knowing the context, one could declare the statement "workers of the world unite" to be an innocent call for workers to unite together and petition for better factory conditions. But since that quote came from Marx, we know better than to assume such a naive and historically incorrect reading of it. We know that when he said "workers of the world unite" he was urging them to carry through a communist revolution.
LOL I knew you would rationalize away that even though Marx praised the founding fathers that he didn't really mean it.
Show me the praise then. It is historical fact that Marx disliked the middle class. It is also historical fact that he saw a transition from the elite to the middle class to be a non-permanent stage in history before his desire of communism was to be achieved. His statement in the quote I provided does nothing more than to identify that the american revolution brought about a stage of the middle class. It does not praise that stage or the middle class as Marx despised them. It simply notes that the stage happened, and Marx believed that would occur before the stage of the workers and communism.
Working men is working men.
Yeah. And the "proletariat" is by definition in Marx's writings the "working men." They are interchangable. What do you think Marx was talking about when he advocated the ascendency of the proletariat? The answer is communism.
Now, if proletariat = working men, as was the case for Marx, how is advocating the ascendency of the working men any different from advocating the ascendency of the proletariat? Other than the obvious synonym, there is no difference what so ever. That is not "making things up," as you assert. That is reading Marx in context and understanding his concepts of various word choices. Or do you think his famous call for the workers of the world to unite was an innocent piece of advice for them to negotiate with the management for better factory conditions?
I agree. But when the country was new special steps had to be taken since we were a weak country industrailly. Tariffs were probably OK. The South liked them too at first.
It is a matter of economic fact and mathematical proof that protective tariffs do more to diminish the economic welfare of a country as a whole than any economic gain in the protected industry to be achieved from it. This is so because the tariff removes a segment of the consumer surplus, but only a portion of that segment is returned to the economy by way of the protected industry in the consumer surplus. The remainder is split between government revenues from the tariff (which tend to be wasted since government expenditures are less efficient than market expenditures of the same ammount), and two segments of dead weight loss - meaning it is removed from the economy and lost entirely.
I agree. But when a nation attempts to dump a prduct like steel that is needed in war to wipe out the competition, we have have to play smart and not allow this to happen in case there is war. Do you disagree wity Bush's protection of our steel, or should we have let our steel industry die by foreign dumping?
Actually the south placed its marbles in agriculture.
Which used a mainly slave force.
In some aspects of that agriculture, namely the large plantantions, slavery was the dominant method of labor and, in being so, was a sinful moral blight on that labor market. But slavery was not the reason for the southern economy - it was an attribute of portions of that economy. The southern economy developed not out of some planned conspiracy but like any economy develops - out of the market areas in which its strengths exist. Resource wise, the southern portion of the nation was and still is prime for certain types of agricultural production. Because agriculture happened to be its resource and because the south had comparitive advantages in the agricultural market, its economy developed around agriculture and the export of agricultural goods. In a similar manner, regions that are endowed with other resources, such as a large coal deposit, will tend to develop economies that best employ those resources. In 1860, the north was relatively well endowed with resources that offered it comparative advantages in industrialization.
Indiana and Illinois has some of the best farmland in America and yet Chicago industrialized nicely. Slavery held the South down to the point where they got behind and started to go against tariffs. There were some that pleaded with the South to get rid of slavery so they could catch up industrially and so the tariffs wouldn't bite them, but unfortunately, southern plantation owners just wouldn't listen. They liked their free money too much.
The south consistently opposed protective tariffs in the national government for at least four decades prior to the war. The change you speak of is simply not there.
They never faced competition from Indian cotton?
Yes. I do. I also agree with Milton Friedman that we should be sending letters of thanks to countries who are percieved to engage in the act so-called as "dumping." The laws of economics backed by mathematical proof indicate that as a country we in fact benefit when other countries do this.
Yes overall. But we cannot let our steel industry die. We may need it in war.
First off, you are incorrect on that assertion. They laid their marbles in agriculture.
Illinois had both industry and agriculture. Why couldn't the South do the same?
An attribute of the cash crop portion of that agricultural market was plantation slavery. As I have noted, that slavery was a sinful blight. But it was not the southern economy any more than labor unions today are the northern economy. Second, the south's agricultural economy was anything but a mistake. It was an efficient use of the south's natural resources of climate, soil, and land that developed as such by way of the market. Under capitalism, steel refineries tend to develop in countries and regions where there is steel. Just the same, agriculture tends to develop where there is land and climate to provide optimal conditions for that agriculture.
It was a mistake for the South to hold on to slavery. Slavery held them back industrially.
It is no accident that corn is grown on the great plains. It is no accident that oil is refined in Texas. It is no accident that coal is mined and processed in upper appalachia. It is no accident that fishing occurs off the new england coast. It is no accident that shipbuilding occurs on major waterways and in deep sea ports. The market leads to these specializations because each of these geographic regions has comparative advantages toward that particular industry or economic sector.
Like I said, Illinois and Indiana did both. Why couldn't the South? Because slavery was too lucrative for them.
Your assertion is a fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Economic studies of the war indicate that the protectionist Morrill tariff severely hurt the northern economy. This was noticed within a year of its adoption as trade with Europe declined to virtually nothing of its previous free trade levels. Unemployment and economic harship struck several northern industries as a result, just as the ceasing of trade in the south due to the blockade produced devastation there. The north was still endowed with resources of manpower and military production though and was accordingly able to eventually win. The fact that its win followed the tariff on the timeline says nothing of the tariff being the cause of that win any more than eating sandwich yesterday would cause you to win the lottery today, though the latter event would follow the former.
Like I said, I'm a free trader until vital war industries are threatened with extinction. So you're probably right. I believe in a ~10% flat income tax. Income taxes should've been increased to 10% to win the war instead of increasing the tariff. Either way, Lincoln and Congress would've been hated by the tax-haters. The government needed funding to win the war and the income tax wasn't enough at the time. The money had to come from somewhere.
It was a collaborative effort of the 1860 Republican platform. Northerners in Congress passed the Morrill tariff in two steps. The House passed it in May 1860 and the Senate passed it a few days before Lincoln's inauguration. They did so with Lincoln's backing as Lincoln advocated a tariff hike in his campaign. He also told an audience before his inauguration that if the bill was not through the senate by the end of the session he would make it a top legislative priority to pass it.
The government needs money. I think flat taxes are the way to go though.
The average tariff rate, which had been adopted in a tax cut in 1857, was about 18% prior to the Morrill bill. At the time that rate was considered very pro-free trade on a world scale. The Morrill tariff immediately doubled that average rate for 1862 and then hiked it to almost 50% by the last two years of the war.
It also hit that high years before, didn't it? It went up and down for decades.
They weren't used for winning the war because they were not revenue tariffs. They were protectionist tariffs. Theoretically, had Lincoln wanted to raise revenues for the war, he could have pushed through a modest tariff hike of a couple percentages. This action would have retained most of the country's trade while bringing in greater revenue. But the hike that they adopted was massive and protectionist. It resulted in wiping out trade with Europe almost entirely.
So if the receipts weren't used for the government, where'd they go?
To use a modern analogy, if the government today had a flat income tax rate of 15% and needed more revenue, it could probably raise it to 18% and achieve that end. But if it raised the rate to 75%, revenue would disapear because the tax itself would discourage the reciept of income and people would stop working as much. The same thing happens in a tariff-based tax system when tariffs are raised so high that they severely discourage and inhibit trade.
I agree with that. But you're saying that the rates weren't raised to raise money to keep the country together. What were they raised for?
It was passed in two stages. The House adopted it in May 1860. The Senate adopted it in February 1861. So the debate on it was waged from spring of 1860 to the end of the 1861 winter, a period encompassing the same time secession occurred.
I believe the South liked tariffs when they were having a hard time competing with Indian cotton decades earlier.
My question then is how many decades earlier? Cause the south consistently pushed for free trade from the 1820's until the war. In fact, South Carolina almost seceded in the early 1830's after the yankees passed a high tariff.
John C. Calhoun was a South Carolinian who initially supported the tariff. The tariffs were uncontroversial until about 1820 and the South held the most Congressional power up till then because of the counting of slaves as partial citizens.
Not really. There was a consistent downward trend in tariffs toward free trade from 1846 to 1860. The north pushed through a tax hike in 1860-61. Prior to 1846, tariffs fluctuated more with the south consistently opposing the high rates dating back to the 1820's.
Because by that time slavery had got them behind industrially.
As I noted previously, that claim is an illegitimate argument that is economically unsupportable and in fact directly contradicted by mathematical analysis of trade and tariffs. This has been known since David Ricardo developed the modern economic study of trade and tariffs in the 1810's. The southern congressional delegation also emphasized it at length in detailed analyses before Congress dating up to the eve of the war.
If tariffs were not meant to protect industries, why were they called "protectionist"?
Protective tariffs do not function well in financing the government because they discourage the very same action upon which that revenue is dependent - imports.
I agree. But we have an extra 150 years of history to confirm this.
No, not really. In his quote he only attributes to them a revolution of the middle class, which was but a stage in his view of history before communism would be achieved.
He praises the ascent of the middle class.
Marx disliked that middle class and denounced it throughout his writings.
What did he say about the middle class?
By political affiliation, McPherson comes from the far left wing of the modern Democrat party. That wing sympathizes heavily with marxist groups, though it is still Democrat in political affiliation.
Tell me how Lincoln was a Communist.
Much to the contrary, and in fact it appears that you are doing exactly what you speak of yourself. You claim Marx's quote was an innocent item of praise for worker's rights. Yet it is a simple fact of Marx's writing that he used the terms "working class" to denote proletarian revolutionary concepts - meaning communism.
Why didn't he say so? Marx praised the end of slavery, there's nothing wrong with that.
Just the same without knowing the context, one could declare the statement "workers of the world unite" to be an innocent call for workers to unite together and petition for better factory conditions. But since that quote came from Marx, we know better than to assume such a naive and historically incorrect reading of it. We know that when he said "workers of the world unite" he was urging them to carry through a communist revolution.
We do? I don't know, I've never read Marx. Like I said, I don't read one man's opinion.
Show me the praise then. It is historical fact that Marx disliked the middle class.
What did he say about the middle class?
It is also historical fact that he saw a transition from the elite to the middle class to be a non-permanent stage in history before his desire of communism was to be achieved. His statement in the quote I provided does nothing more than to identify that the american revolution brought about a stage of the middle class. It does not praise that stage or the middle class as Marx despised them. It simply notes that the stage happened, and Marx believed that would occur before the stage of the workers and communism.
One man's opinion.
Yeah. And the "proletariat" is by definition in Marx's writings the "working men."
Then why didn't he say "proletariate"?
They are interchangable. What do you think Marx was talking about when he advocated the ascendency of the proletariat? The answer is communism.
He didn't say "proletariate, he said "working men".
Now, if proletariat = working men, as was the case for Marx, how is advocating the ascendency of the working men any different from advocating the ascendency of the proletariat?
Why didn't he say "proletariate"? You're adding words to spruce it up.
Other than the obvious synonym, there is no difference what so ever.
Except he didn't say it. He said "working men".
That is not "making things up," as you assert.<
Yes it is. He didn't say "communism" nor "proletariate". You added those words. You're making thing up like neo-Confederates always do.
That is reading Marx in context and understanding his concepts of various word choices. Or do you think his famous call for the workers of the world to unite was an innocent piece of advice for them to negotiate with the management for better factory conditions?
I have no idea. I've never read his words. Given that you think Lincoln was a commie, I don't trust your judgment of other people's words.