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The Founding Fathers Funded Government
Through Tariffs

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Posted By: 4250Luis, 2/20/2025 6:34:02 AM

President Donald Trump calls tariff "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." This refutes the orthodoxy of unilateral free trade championed for hundreds of years beginning with the 1776 "Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith, widely known as the father of modern economics. But economist Donald J. Boudreaux of the American Institute for Economic Research and former economics department chair at George Mason University writes Smith offered four exceptions to the principle of unilateral free trade: "These exceptions are, in the order in which Smith took them up, protective tariffs for purposes of -

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Reply 1 - Posted by: privateer 2/20/2025 7:22:46 AM (No. 1900024)
As usual, Elder presents a careful argument for his thesis. In this article there is useful background info on tariffs and their relationship to taxes, and the funding of government. The chances of our current greedy government adopting any of Elder's seven points? Slim to none.
7 people like this.

Reply 2 - Posted by: bpl40 2/20/2025 8:04:49 AM (No. 1900061)
I am no lawyer. But I have been suspicious for a long time whether direct taxation of citizens income by the Federal Government is acceptable to the constitution in its present form.
5 people like this.

Reply 3 - Posted by: anniebc 2/20/2025 8:52:47 AM (No. 1900087)
Most politicians are greedy, and they hate the people they claim to serve. It's time to kick out politicians who have been there too long and have left off serving the American people.
5 people like this.

Reply 4 - Posted by: MattMusson1 2/20/2025 9:16:27 AM (No. 1900113)
t
1 person likes this.

Reply 5 - Posted by: MattMusson1 2/20/2025 9:19:03 AM (No. 1900116)
Early state and local governments also used lotteries to get money.
4 people like this.

Reply 6 - Posted by: stablemoney 2/20/2025 9:40:27 AM (No. 1900129)
We need to downsize the federal government by at least 50%. Everything is decided in DC, and all our money goes to DC, which means everything done has to be approved by a bureaucrat in DC.
3 people like this.

Reply 7 - Posted by: JHHolliday 2/20/2025 11:09:26 AM (No. 1900188)
A big reason for the Civil War..... Money When Lincoln was told that the South was going to secede, He said, "But what will become of my tariffs"? No income tax then. It would have been a crippling financial blow to the North. In addition to that, the northern ports could be ice choked in the winter and the wooden ships of the day couldn't enter or leave them. Losing Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans etal would have brought the North's import/export trade to a standstill in the cold months. Lincoln had the businessmen screaming at him in one ear and the abolitionists in the other, but the main, immediate reason for the war was financial. Throw in the South's states rights argument and the fact that they had "seceded" from England within living memory, and the South thought it was possible and correct to secede from the North. The war was almost inevitable.
4 people like this.

Reply 8 - Posted by: DVC 2/20/2025 11:14:27 AM (No. 1900194)
Until the income tax was passed in 1913 which required a Constitutional Amendment to make the previously illegal tax, legal, the only real way to fund the Federal government was tariffs. That was a GOOD thing.
2 people like this.

Reply 9 - Posted by: DVC 2/20/2025 11:15:27 AM (No. 1900195)
Re #2, they had to change the Constitution to make it legal. It was unconstitutional, as intended, in our original Constitution.
1 person likes this.

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