For since the Revolution, America has had a standard of living that has been the envy of the world. From the Civil War through the 1920s, as we became the greatest manufacturing power the world had ever seen, our workers enjoyed pay and benefits that were unmatched anywhere.
Yet our exports in those decades were double our imports, and our trade surpluses annually added 4 percent to the gross national product. How did we do it?
We taxed the products of foreign factories and workers and used the revenue to finance the government. We imposed tariffs of up to 40 percent on foreign goods entering our market and used the tariff money to keep taxes low in the United States.
We made foreigners pay a price to get their products into our market and made them pay to help finance our government. We put our own country and people first.
More common sense from PJB.
I'm all for "Free Trade" but only when it is genuinely free & fair, not subsidized by governments or discounted on the backs of slave labor.
Here is the complete PJB column.
Kerodin
III
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
ReplyDeleteThe failure to protect America and Americans has led to the left wholly incorporating the unions ...the self-styled "advocate" of the American "working man"... into its fold. If the so-called "right" would address the issues facing us, the workers, the unions would lot flock so heavily to the left.
Whether or not it is too late to salvage any kind of unity with union types remains to be seen. Likely not, under the current crop of bought-and-paid-for marxist union leadership.
Free trade is a nice thought, but rather idealistic and frankly, unattainable in our world. This, coming from me, a former "market anarchist". Each nation will compete for advantages, and it is naive to think that China or India, or any other nation, will surrender competitiveness in the interest of "free and fair" trade.
I'm all for free trade too. It's just that "free and fair" is a dreamy-eyed pipe dream.
We fight or we die.
Such protectionism and self-interest works against the interest of the financiers, usurers, and "bankers" that have wholly and completely owned our nation since the time period you referenced.
For the benefit of those who dislike the idea of me speaking of the unions as an unmitigated evil, I will qualify my words with the statement that, as currently constituted and arrayed, they are fighting for our enemies. Engage appropriately.
The unions and the worker can be brought around, but only by a movement and philosophy that is presented to them as an answer to their problems. Thus far, the "liberty"/constitutionalist movement has wholly and completely ignored this segment of our population.
Pity.
The union workers are, by far, more willing to take to the streets and fight for their cause than is the liberty movement.
Just think about it, ok everyone?
AP