Posted on 05/13/2003 6:17:13 AM PDT by VMI70
This past weekend, my son and I went on his troop's annual father-son hike. His troop is one of many in the Robert E. Lee Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which is headquartered in Richmond, VA.
On Sunday, during the church service at the end of the hike, it was announced that the Council directors had voted to change its name from The Robert E. Lee Council, which has been in use for many decades, to something else.
This morning, the news broke on the local radio station: WRVA 1140 AM, Richmond's Morning News with Jimmy Barrett.
Which also applies to the income tax argument, but then we're wandering off topic by pursuing it.
Can a tax, no matter how disproportionately applied, be abusive? I say yes. To think that a tax is by definition not abusive because others pay more than you is a strange stance. It's like saying the prison guards beat me the least.
Is it invalid for the South to complain about abuses of the North as well? What about our complaints about abuses of the Iraqis by SH & Co, should we have just sat back because we weren't being tortured?
Moral absolutes and disputes aren't always dependent on one's current situation, in fact rarely so. Jefferson and Madison did not wait for the president to excersize his newfound powers prior to passing the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, no?
I've never seen an reputable economist disagree, but would be interested.
Unable to refute the source, who also happens to be a credentialed economist, you have resorted to attacking him. Needless to say, your claims remain unjustified and refuted.
Or did you not read what I posted, non-seq? You see, DiLorenzo's claims are not merely his own but also are consistent with the textbook definition of a tariff's effects. He quoted one such definition from "International Economics" by Brown and Hogendorn:
" "Importers pass on [most of] their costs to buyers, and industrial buyers pass those costs on in the form of higher prices. . . . Consumers, hit directly or indirectly, include the inflationary price increases in their wage and salary demands. Everybody tries to pass the tax to someone else. The only group that is powerless to pass the costs on further are the exporters, who have to sell at world prices, and swallow those costs. In essence, a tax on imports becomes a tax on exports."
I would be interested in the opinion of an economist who has not expressed an opinion either way on Abraham Lincoln, and certainly one without the bias against Lincoln that DiLorenzo has.
A credentialed economist with an obvious bias against Abraham Lincoln, and one who has shown in the past that he is not above deliberate falsehoods to make his point? Yeah, I'm suspicious.
Indeed. It has been said that an understanding of tariffs is the one thing that practically all economists, who are notorious for disagreements on other matters, agree upon. In fact, those who peddle protectionist nonsense these days tend to be one of three things:
(1) agenda-driven organizations with an interest in protection, such as labor unions and industries that stand to gain
(2) ignorant individuals who have been conned into accepting the arguments put for by the members of group (1) for exactly that purpose
(3) ignorant individuals who stare head on at all the evidence in the world showing the fallacy of protectionism yet refuse to budge out of their own stubbornness or unwillingness to admit personal fallability.
Here it is again, since you have now missed it twice:
"Importers pass on [most of] their costs to buyers, and industrial buyers pass those costs on in the form of higher prices. . . . Consumers, hit directly or indirectly, include the inflationary price increases in their wage and salary demands. Everybody tries to pass the tax to someone else. The only group that is powerless to pass the costs on further are the exporters, who have to sell at world prices, and swallow those costs. In essence, a tax on imports becomes a tax on exports."
DiLorenzo already gave you one...well, in fact, two since the book had multiple authors:
"Importers pass on [most of] their costs to buyers, and industrial buyers pass those costs on in the form of higher prices. . . . Consumers, hit directly or indirectly, include the inflationary price increases in their wage and salary demands. Everybody tries to pass the tax to someone else. The only group that is powerless to pass the costs on further are the exporters, who have to sell at world prices, and swallow those costs. In essence, a tax on imports becomes a tax on exports."
Lot of wage and salary demands in the mid-nineteenth century were there? Employers set the rates at what they wanted to pay, and if someone didn't want to work for that rate then they found someone who would. And since the majority of people, North and south, East and West, earned their livings as farmers then they were under the same constraints as the southern exporter, weren't they? They sold their goods at what the market would pay for it. So a tax on imports became a tax on anyone who was at the mercy of what the market would pay, which meant it hit virtually all consumers in all parts of the country equally. Or did Tommy forget about that?
There have always been wage and salary demands, non-seq. It's called "I will do X labor for the price Y"
Employers set the rates at what they wanted to pay, and if someone didn't want to work for that rate then they found someone who would.
Honestly, non-seq. Where are you getting this stuff? The AFL-CIO website? Employers do not arbitrarily "set the rates." Employer demands for labor, in intersection with employee supply of it, does.
And since the majority of people, North and south, East and West, earned their livings as farmers then they were under the same constraints as the southern exporter, weren't they?
Again, non-seq, your post reeks of ignorance. The southern farmers were for all practical purposes exporters as their wealth came from exports, which means they were indeed affected the same way. As for the north, its exports were less than a fourth of the nation's total and its small agricultural markets were INCLUDED on the list of protected goods under the Morrill Act.
They sold their goods at what the market would pay for it.
Yep, and when the market is screwed around with by a redistributionary protective tariff, the price taking exporters of southern agriculture get screwed in the pocketbooks.
So a tax on imports became a tax on anyone who was at the mercy of what the market would pay, which meant it hit virtually all consumers in all parts of the country equally.
Nice non-sequitur, non-seq. Your conclusion does not follow from its premise, nor does it have any basis in fact. To use a modern analogy, saying that the Morrill tariff hit everyone equally in 1860 is akin to saying that the income tax of today hits everyone equally. As you are no doubt aware, the south produced over 75% of the ENTIRE NATION'S exports in 1860. Economic law says that exporters, more than anyone else, are price takers at the world price and cannot pass the costs of a tariff on. That means they are hurt more than anyone else.
Now do a little math, non-seq. If 75% of exporters are in the south and 25% are in the north, who is going to get hit more by a tax that hurts exporters most of all?
Calling ignorance ingorance is not an insult, Non-Seq. It's a statement of fact. You engaged in ignorance and I simply made note of that fact.
Leaving aside for a moment your ridiculous claim about employees setting labor rates
You sound just like a labor union thug, you know. Now not only are you making absurd claims of wage arbitrariness at the mercy of the employer, but you are also deliberately constructing straw men accusations against others of alleging a similar price arbitrariness by the employees when nothing of the sort is true.
the gist of DiLusionals arguement seems to be that since southern plantation owners were at the mercy of what the market would pay for their goods then they were most susceptible to tariffs. I pointed out, and I can't see where you managed to refute it, that the overwhelming majority of the people in the country were in the same boat.
Those who willfully blind themselves can seldom see much of anything. Your statement that everyone else was in the same boat is a falsehood for the reasons I stated previously. While it is indeed true that the country at large was harmed by the tariff, harm was disproportionately southern. Southern agricultural exports were over THREE TIMES AS LARGE as northern agricultural exports. Do the math, Non-Seq. If I export three times as much as you, I'm gonna end up paying more of the tax than you as well.
Further, as I noted previously, your argument ignores the fact that the Morrill Act extended protection to several of the northern farm commodities.
The Northern wheat farmer did not set the price for his crop any more than the southern cotton farmer, and the fact that his crop was primarily used for domestic consumption is meaningless.
Not if the tax is on trade, it isn't!
Both were at the mercy of the market
No. Absent tariffs, both were price takers. Install a tariff though and the export-dependent one of the two becomes at the mercy of the federal government's tax collector.
Honestly, Non-Seq. Trying to discuss trade economics with you is like trying to discuss them with a labor union thug, Ross Perot wacko, or Buchananite. It's also like trying to discuss income tax economics with a liberal Democrat.
In each and every case, no ammount of fact matters to you or will ever defer you from pushing thesame tired old argument that was just as wrong in Lincoln's day as it is today. I could present the president of the AFL-CIO with a letter signed by every single living nobel laureate in economics stating "protectionism is wrong and hurts the nation" and he would still advocate protectionism. He would still put forth the exact same arguments he had before as if nothing whatsoever had changed, that even though they lack any merit. He would still advocate protectionism because his interests are NOT in the good of the nation as he claims but rather in the good of those few who are making money off the tariff at everyone else's expense, meaning himself.
Just the same, I could present you with a letter signed by every single living nobel laureate in economics stating "A tax on imports is really a tax on exports" just as that textbook does and you would not accept it. You would still put forth the same arguments you did before even though they have no merit. You would still defend the Morrill act and belittle southern grievances with it because you are NOT interested in historically representing them with accuracy but rather in arguing your predecided ideology of right and wrong as it pertains to the civil war. You may deny this reality to your heart's content, but the record of this and other threads provides ample testimony to its existence.
Then again, who are we to question his work? The monkey's trying to do brain surgery and he can't be bothered with trivial questions about his medical credentials at this time.
Dealing with you it's easy to understand what Schiller meant when he said, "Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain." So you can take your Tommy DiLusional quotes and stick them where the sun don't shine because that's all they're worth.
Leaving aside the insults and the smart-ass remarks that our posts have degenerated to, please explain this quote of Tommy's. Why are exporters the only ones who have to swallow the costs? Why are they any different from anyone who produces a fungible commodity, regardless of whether it is for export or domestic consumption? The Northern wheat farmer is no more able to add to his price to cover his additional cost for imported goods than is the southern cotton exporter. He has to sell at the market price, regardless. And the market price doesn't care if he had to assume additional costs because of the tariff or not. The market price is determined by the supply of wheat only. Same as the cotton exporter.
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