Report on Manufactures inacted in full

The problem with the classic liberal view of economics, especially in regards to welfare economics is that it's paradigm assumes free mobility of labor and capital.

These are unrealistic assumptions, and they disparity between the relative mobility of capital and labor was only greater in previous ages. Even without artificial barriers to labor (customs, immigration controls, etc.), in the 18th and 19th century most people would likely never move far away from their birthplace at all in their life. Capital, however, was much more fluid. Merchants and bankers could move capital in a manner most advantageous to them, while laborers could not.

We're not all better off under a no-tariff or subsidy regime, because it fails to meet the preconditions for a Pareto optimal market.

I find it particularly amusing that it is being claimed that tariffs represent a terrible intrusion into the free market, when a government subsidized landrush like the Louisiana purchase is entirely ignored.
 
Railman is also ignoring that the tariff wall being discussed is actually less than what happened in OTL.

But Jello, you didn't say what you think would happen if Hamilton got his way.
 
Of course, there are also considerations of how the Slave owning Southern Aristocracy will manage to twist things.
 

The Sandman

Banned
Of course, there are also considerations of how the Slave owning Southern Aristocracy will manage to twist things.

Badly.

The entire slave-worked plantation structure that the wealthy Southern gentry depended on is antithetical to real industrialization, or even to the "yeoman farmer" ideal that Jefferson claimed to espouse. It requires the concentration of vast tracts of land into a small number of hands, it encourages the production of a very small number of high-value cash crops at the expense of a more balanced crop rotation, it depresses local wages for anyone not a wealthy planter to unsustainable levels, and it requires that slave-owners distort the political processes of the rest of the nation in order to eliminate any positive incentive for their slaves to escape.

In short, the Southern gentry are going to have to do everything in their power to prevent Hamilton's vision of America from coming into being if they want to preserve their own way of life. The only real question is how many of them figure that out, and how long it takes them.
 
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