<You claimed "Any tariff on imports only, no matter how evenly distributed, are protectionist". That is 100% unadulterated pure bullshit. Every person you mentioned and every single libertarian Nobel Prize winning economist would disagree with you. No economist on earth would ever say that a flat 3% tariff is even the slighest bit protectionist.>
Gosh Paul, I'm starting to think that maybe you need some edumacation in this here eckynomonics. I know that we are all a bunch of hicks and that you know what is best for us, but now it seems you done gone and said something wrong. In fact, Murray Rothbard did have something to say on tariffs, and it almost seems like he was speaking directly to you! Tariffs are always protectionist. In fact, every argument you have made so far is protectionist. You say that bringing in foreign goods is harmful to American manufacturers, so one can *only* assume that by levying a tariff, even one so small as 3%, that you intend to "protect" American manufacturers. Anyway, I'll let Mr. Rothbard, one of those people that you claim would disagree with me, speak for himself: Excerpted from Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity by Murray N. Rothbard, Monograph first published in the Mises Institute, 1986: How To Look at Tariffs and Quotas The best way to look at tariffs or import quotas or other protectionist restraints is to forget about political boundaries. Political boundaries of nations may be important for other reasons, but they have no economic meaning whatever. Suppose, for example, that each of the United States were a separate nation. Then we would hear a lot of protectionist bellyaching that we are now fortunately spared. Think of the howls by high-priced New York or Rhode Island textile manufacturers who would then be complaining about the "unfair," "cheap labor" competition from various low-type "foreigners" from Tennessee or North Carolina, or vice versa. Fortunately, the absurdity of worrying about the balance of payments is made evident by focusing on inter-state trade. For nobody worries about the balance of payments between New York and New Jersey, or, for that matter, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, because there are no customs officials recording such trade and such balances. If we think about it, it is clear that a call by New York firms for a tariff against North Carolina is a pure ripoff of New York (as well as North Carolina) consumers, a naked grab for coerced special privilege by less efficient business firms. If the 50 states were separate nations, the protectionists would then be able to use the trappings of patriotism, and distrust of foreigners, to camouflage and get away with their looting the consumers of their own region. Fortunately, inter-state tariffs are unconstitutional. But even with this clear barrier, and even without being able to wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalism, protectionists have been able to impose inter-state tariffs in another guise. Part of the drive for continuing increases in the federal minimum-wage law is to impose a protectionist devise against lower-wage, lower-labor-cost competition from North Carolina and other southern states against their New England and New York competitors. During the 1966 Congressional battle over a higher federal minimum wage, for example, the late Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY) freely admitted that one of his main reasons for supporting the bill was to cripple the southern competitors of New York textile firms. Since southern wages are generally lower than in the north, the business firms hardest hit by an increased minimum wage (and the workers struck by unemployment) will be located in the south. Another way in which interstate trade restrictions have been imposed has been in the fashionable name of "safety." Government-organized state milk cartels in New York, for example, have prevented importation of milk from nearby New Jersey under the patently spurious grounds that the trip across the Hudson would render New Jersey milk "unsafe." If tariffs and restraints on trade are good for a country, then why not indeed for a state or region? The principle is precisely the same. In America s first great depression, the Panic of 1819, Detroit was a tiny frontier town of only a few hundred people. Yet protectionist cries arosefortunately not fulfilledto prohibit all "imports" from outside of Detroit, and citizens were exhorted to buy only Detroit. If this nonsense had been put into effect, general starvation and death would have ended all other economic problems for Detroiters. So why not restrict and even prohibit trade, i.e., "imports," into a city, or a neighborhood, or even on a block, or, to boil it down to its logical conclusion, to one family? Why shouldn t the Jones family issue a decree that from now on, no member of the family can buy any goods or services produced outside the family house? Starvation would quickly wipe out this ludicrous drive for self-sufficiency. And yet we must realize that this absurdity is inherent in the logic of protectionism. Standard protectionism is just as preposterous, but the rhetoric of nationalism and national boundaries has been able to obscure this vital fact. The upshot is that protectionism is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense, destructive of all economic prosperity. We are not, if we were ever, a world of self-sufficient farmers. The market economy is one vast latticework throughout the world, in which each individual, each region, each country, produces what he or it is best at, most relatively efficient in, and exchanges that product for the goods and services of others. Without the division of labor and the trade based upon that division, the entire world would starve. Coerced restraints on tradesuch as protectionismcripple, hobble, and destroy trade, the source of life and prosperity. Protectionism is simply a plea that consumers, as well as general prosperity, be hurt so as to confer permanent special privilege upon groups of less efficient producers, at the expense of more competent firms and of consumers. But it is a peculiarly destructive kind of bailout, because it permanently shackles trade under the cloak of patriotism. Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: You claimed "Any tariff on imports only, no matter how evenly distributed, are protectionist". That is 100% unadulterated pure bullshit. Every person you mentioned and every single libertarian Nobel Prize winning economist would disagree with you. No economist on earth would ever say that a flat 3% tariff is even the slighest bit protectionist. There is no way that anyone can legitimately claim that a voluntary choice of bringing goods into America while knowing a tariff is associated with tariffs, when they could just as easily avoid the tariff by selling domestic goods is an initiation of force. I've never said that tariffs can't be harmful, but if they are low enough as to not be protectionist (3% is not protectionist by any stretch of the imagination) they are not harmful. --- In [email protected], Cory Nott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've joined, and I believe that so would such great Libertarian thinkers as Frederic Bastiat, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and so on. But of course, we have someone here is smarter than everyone else and must "educate" us in the proper application of Libertarianism. > > Any tariff on imports only, no matter how evenly distributed, are protectionist. It compels those who buy domestic merchandise to pay higher prices than they would if they bought them abroad. There is no way Paul can claim that there is no initiation of force involved here, even though the Constitution granted the government the power to implement tariffs, that was an initiation of force cemented in the formation of our government. Paul's argument about markets is collectivist in nature - the buyer and seller do not have control of their market; their property is subject to the rules laid out by the Federal government, weak though the rules might be. > > I do, however, believe that he is correct that a low, evenly distributed tariff isn't a bad way to fund the government as long as it's capped and can't be applied selectively to different industries, countries of origin or specific manufacturers. From 1783 to 1807 and 1846 to 1860 we had no or low taxes, low tariffs, and hard currency and the country prospered naturally (rather than as a result of pent up demand that comes after a major war) more than during any other period. > > So, he's correct that tariffs can be good, but he's wrong that they aren't an initiation of force, and he's wrong that they aren't harmful. They just aren't "too harmful" compared to most other ways we'd fund government (other than by voluntary donations.) > > > > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > From: uncoolrabbit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Forget his metaphors Boyd and join with me in asking > > > > "How, in a Libertarian Society, is it not an initiation of force > > to mandate a seller to charge, and a buyer to pay, to the goverment, > > a Tax on the sale of those goods?" > > OK. Consider me joined. > > Anybody else wish to ask the question? > > BWS > > > ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian > > > > SPONSORED LINKS > Libertarian English language Political parties Online dictionary American politics > > --------------------------------- > YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS > > > Visit your group "Libertarian" on the web. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. > > > --------------------------------- > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian SPONSORED LINKS Libertarian English language Political parties Online dictionary American politics --------------------------------- YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS Visit your group "Libertarian" on the web. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
