I feel as if I have been awoken. Now that I know what i'm looking for, I see the pervasive influence of this power structure elite in much of history and likewise in current events.
I used to think naively that things were just what they seemed to be, but now I know that powerful people work at keeping things (media and public policy) advocating positions which benefit them.
We cannot balance the budget because these power barons want the spending. It enriches them and their allies. Indeed, it is way beyond a "military industrial complex" it is Henry Clay's old "Mercantilism" made manifest. It is that same old collusion between government and industry to increase the power of both at the expense of freedom and individuality. As David Rockefeller said:
"WHEN YOU'RE THE 'STATE', IT'S A PRETTY GOOD DEAL!"
The people who influenced the government to start the civil war are still with us. The problems of then are still the problems of today. We have an elite class that presumes to govern us to their benefit and not our own.
Same now as then.
"...since independence, and through the first half of the 19th C., American manufacturing was struggling. American-made cloth could not compete on price with imported cheap, industrial-made British cloth that flooded the American market. So American manufacturers, many of them in the northeast, began pressing Congress for protectionist tariffs against British cloth and other manufactures, to give their industries a chance to compete and take root.
Already from the start, we begin to see the kernel of what would later become known as “American System”, a nationalist-protectionist doctrine, what may be regarded as an updated American version of old Mercantilism. This began as early as Alexander Hamilton in the 1780s. Hamilton realized that political independence alone was not enough, that the American economy remained dependent on Britain, and envisaged the federal government as a tool to break that dependence. Hamilton advocated the establishment of the First Bank of the United States to promote US commerce and manufacturing and had already begun promoting protectionist tariffs in 1791.
The first protectionist tariff was passed in 1816 Early activists like Matthew Carey of Pennsylvania, raised protectionism into a major item of the political agenda. It became part of the platform of Henry Clay's Whigs. The economics behind it was given theoretical depth by Carey's son Henry C. Carey and the German exile Friedrich List, who provided “infant industry” arguments of a “national system” of protectionism. It was labeled the “American System” to contrast with the “British System” of Manchester School liberalism. The retardation of economics in American universities was partly because the best English-language textbooks of the day were based on classical Ricardian economics, peddling “British” free trade doctrines so inimical to the American industrialists who frequently served as university trustees. Economics was suspect, until Carey-based curricula were developed as alternatives. .
Ranged against the northern protectionists were the plantation lords of the South. They feared retaliatory British tariffs on their cotton exports. Southerners did not accept the Northern argument that a growing American cloth industry could substitute for British markets. British industry was so much larger and more developed than the American equivalent. Being still small and unproductive, American cloth manufacturers could not hope to offer as good a price for Southern cotton as the British manufacturers could, nor could they sell Southern consumers manufactured goods as cheaply as the British did. In Southern calculation, a US-wide tariff would turn the terms of trade against them – what they produced would sell for less, what they consumed would cost more to buy. A protectionist tariff would hit Southern pocketbooks, and hit them hard.
The battle over the tariff was bitterly fought throughout the 19h C. between Northern and Southern representatives in Congress. Northerners demanded protectionism, Southerners demanded free trade. Whenever northerners gained the upper hand in Congress, the federal tariff was pushed upwards. Whenever southerners managed to get in the saddle, the tariff was pulled downwards.
In 1828, Northerners in Congress managed to pass a stiff protectionist tariff – the ‘tariff of abominations’ as it was known then. It caused a very serious quarrel as Southern states rallied against the tariff. Some Southern states, notably South Carolina, refused to collect the tariff at their ports even threatened to secede from the Union if the issue was pressed (’Nullification Crisis’). This quarrel nearly broke out in civil war, but it was quietly resolved with a compromise tariff in 1833. But it was a dress rehearsal for what was to come.
Between the 1830s and 1850s, the to-and-fro over the tariff continued. Into this configuration entered the new states of the West, conquered in the Mexican-American War of 1848. Realizing that the entry of any new state into the union would tip the mathematical balance between Northern & Southern interests in Congress, Southerners insisted that they become slave states and thus aligned with their interests, while Northern representatives insisted the new states be free soil. Tariff calculations and the slavery question became more intertwined. American System propagandists, like Horace Greeley, were quick to conjoin them together with the paradoxical slogan that a vote for protectionism was a vote for freedom, while voting for free trade meant voting for slavery.
Things reached an apex with the election of 1860. A new party, the Republican Party, had been formed, which promised three things on its platform: free states in the West, a protectionist tariff and a homestead act (hand out federal land for free to western farmers). Experienced Southern politicians had defeated tariffs before by means of divide-and-rule politicking and had forced free-slave compromises on new states. But the Republicans were different. They represented a shatter-proof coalition of Northern manufacturing interests (who wanted the tariff) with Western farming interests (who wanted the homestead act). Together, their representatives outnumbered the Southern delegations. Try as they will, Southern politicians failed to drive a wedge between them. The Republican coalition held together. With the electoral victory of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans in 1860, the Southern states knew the game was up. The Congressional mathematics were now against them, they could no longer use crafty politics to obstruct the passage of the Northern program. The triumphant Republicans promised the passage of a highly protectionist tariff – the Morrill Tariff – as the first item of the Congressional agenda of 1861. In anticipation, the Southern states, led by South Carolina, promptly seceded from the Union, and the Civil War began.
In a larger sense, the Civil War was not merely a war over slavery or tariffs, but over the nature of the country itself. Is the United States going to be an industrial or agrarian nation? Self-sufficient or entangled abroad? Is the elite going to be composed of enlightened country gentlemen or arriviste industrialists? Jeffersons or Hamiltons? This debate, this tug-o’-war, had been raging from the start of the nation's birth, long before tariffs or slavery hit the headlines. http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/schools/american.htm