I don’t often disagree with the esteemed Ron Paul, but this is one of those times. The Founders of America were very OK and onboard with tariffs on foreign goods. In fact, tariffs and excise taxes were THE sources of funding for the Federal (then, non-Feral) Government for our 1st century and then some.

There was, of course, no income tax during that period, but Ron Paul is certainly right now, that:

Some even claim that tariffs can generate enough revenue to allow the government to repeal the income tax.

Trump is not a numbers guy, so he has no clue on this, but even the intelligent Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, aka, the Instapundit, has been fooled by the numbers, as Peak Stupidity corrected in the post DIMS? – Revenue replacement of Income Tax by Tariffs.* (DIMS = Does It Make Sense?) Of course, the numbers don’t pencil out, not with this huge beast of a Feral Gov’t.

You can’t have a serious economy as a big country** without having a serious manufacturing base. We can’t all just sell each other gourmet hamburgers and craft beer.

.

* Prof. Reynolds has since corrected his error, the mistake of using a 10-year tariff revenue number as an annual one, the “right” one being rectally extracted to begin with anyway…

** Niche exceptions like Switzerland can do fine with banking for the world, chocolate, tourism, and coo-coo clocks, and with smart industrious White people running the place.

The main difference between tariffs and (other) taxes is that they directly affect other countries (regardless of “who pays” the tariff).
Most other countries, when another country enacts tariffs against it, enact their own tariffs on imports from the offending country. THAT’s when it can really hurt, and ordinary taxes don’t have that effect.

“Theft”!!?? Who’d ever’ve thunk that the owners and operators of an apparatus founded and built on the armed theft of an entire continent would cease and desist simply because their present “target population” are their very own subject-citizens, instead of Native Nations by now pretty much bereft of “resources” and land sufficiently easy to steal….not completely, mind you, but the remaining pickings are somewhat hedged-around by legal and social obstacles making just grabbing them maybe more complicated and thus more expensive than they’re “worth”….at the moment? That is expected to change, of course, as the “global” gulag expands to control….well….the “globe.”

Dr. Paul, for all his fine qualities, continues to nibble and quibble around the far margins of a system of organized THEFT that dwarfs his most pessimistic estimates of its monstrous structure and its malevolent purposes. No blame, just fact.

Here in Indian Country we are watching the damned thing “self”-destruct in an orgy of terminal greed matching anything ever in the sordid history of the world-wasting disease so many idolize as “civilization.” So Dr. Paul and followers can take heart. Their nemesis is indeed in the final throes of its own demise. Too bad most of ‘em will go right on to the bitter end trying and hoping to salvage something, for their own “self”, of the comforts and conveniences that baited them into aiding and abetting its predatory and parasitical processes in the first place. Too bad so much of their weeping and wailing and gnashing-of-teeth is yet to come.

Leaving the Libertarian and economic principles aside of a moment, let me add something else in support of what Trump has been doing.

For one thing, the tariffs are being used as threats against Canada and Mexico to put pressure on them to close their borders. Granted, the onus is really on the invaded country, but one must admit that Trump-47 is doing a bang-up job on that… for now, anyway. Perhaps other threats would suffice, but if this works, more power to Trump for his successful tactics.

Then, let’s talk fairness. Does anyone here know what kind of tariff levies are placed upon US goods entering Canada? From what I read above, I don’t think even Ron Paul does. Look up some of the numbers. OUR tariffs can be considered retaliatory against most countries, because we get shafted by most, our having sat on our laurels for so long after being the manufacturer for the Free World for many years.

Now, regarding China, even 50% should be considered pretty damn fair after our having a one-sided trade deal with them (look up “Favored Nation Status”) for 3 decades running. Trump DOES know how badly we’ve been getting screwed by the Chinese (leaving IP theft aside here), and I’m glad for that. I will put my story to illustrate an example of the unfairness not seen by the legal eagles and politicians in another comment.

This goes back 15 years. A Chinese manufacture that I was familiar with had a whole container of goods rejected by the big German customer due to just too damn many defects. (Peak Stupidity has long discussed the problems with the Cheap China-made Crap.)

Well, this container got sent back across the oceans, getting stuck at the Suez Canal a while, then eventually making it back to the port at Guangdong, Shenzhen. The company could not get the container from the docks for 6 months. Why? The officials there treated it as imported goods! That’s just what they do.

This story has a funny addendum though: The container made it back to the factory finally. Around that time, the boss and saleswoman went to a trade show in downtown Guangzhou. A customer from Mexico was interested in their products, so they took him with him in the van back 40 miles to the plant. On the way, the boss told the saleswoman that she (the boss was a woman) was going to sell this Mexican customer that container of the rejected goods. (After all, it was already loaded.)

It turns out that said Mexican buyer understood Chinese! I mean, who does that? Needless to say, no deal!

40 years of free trade, comparative advantage, libertarian policies = gutted manufacturing base and decimated middle class. The rust belt plagued with fentanyl overdose deaths and once great cities turned into black run hellholes, but you’re still on your high horse preaching free trade. Pathetic.

Switzerland is not a niche exception. Switzerland’s manufacturing sector as a percentage of GDP is similar to that of Germany, Japan and South Korea and is around twice higher than that of the US or the UK.

David Stockman has come up with an alternative or addition to tariffs to protect American manufacturing. He has suggested that the Fed follow a deflationary policy. This would drop American wages and make American workers more competitive with low cost foreign labor. At the same time domestic wages are dropping, domestic prices would be dropping too so American standards of living would remain the same.

This is basically what happened when we became a manufacturing powerhouse in the 1865 to 1915 period. Being on the gold standard not only kept inflation down but there was an actual slow deflation during this period. Tariffs were used to fund the federal government.

Keeping this from being done currently are certain influential groups that benefit from inflation instead of deflation. One beneficiary is borrowers who get to borrow money at low interest rates. The biggest borrower now, of course, is the federal government. The high levels of government borrowing pays for our warfare-welfare state. At the same time, saving is discouraged by these low interest rates. Also benefiting from high inflation are the ten percent of the population that own ninety percent of stocks, since high inflation encourages stock market bubbles.

On the matter of Donald Chump’s tariffs, you write this:

I don’t often disagree with the esteemed Ron Paul, but this is one of those times.

Well Achmed, you got that wrong. (You seem to be making a habit of it lately).
Dr Ron Paul is one very wise man indeed. You can bet your life that his position on tariffs is not something he formulated overnight, but something he’s grasped over many decades of study.
He’s looked into the matter in depth (as have all the leading Austrian economists of the last century and more). And ALL of them have come to the inescapable conclusion that tariffs are net negative – ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE.

Yes, the U.S in the early days of the republic had some tariffs and it did well enough.

But the U.S flourished in those years DESPITE the imposition of tariffs.
It would have performed far better still WITHOUT tariffs.

The fact is, in the era of the Founding Fathers, the U.S had minimal Gubmint as a % of GDP.
It had negligible governmental intrusion in the way of impediments and regulatory barriers that hindered the private sector from doing what it does best. ie: wealth generation that lifts all demographics.
(And of course there were no Income or Corporate taxes levied).

All of these things collectively, more than compensated for the negative effects of the tariffs.
Meanwhile, you badly need to read the following article by the great Tom DiLorenzo:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/11/thomas-dilorenzo/our-history-of-protectionist-tariff-train-wrecks/

Summary: As Donald J Chump applies tariffs and other countries respond with retaliatory measures, this will rapidly descend into what transpired in the immediate aftermath of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff act.
ie: the descent into worldwide economic stagnation – of which the U.S will be the worst affected.

Anyway, I’m rooting for Donald Chump to apply even greater tariffs.
Because the sooner the U.S descends into an inflationary Depression, the better.
When the U.S economy descends into the abyss (and the USD loses is world reserve currency status), the rest of the world will rejoice as the Great Satan gets its well deserved comeuppance.

OUR tariffs can be considered retaliatory against most countries, because we get shafted by most ….Trump DOES know how badly we’ve been getting screwed by the Chinese

What the eff are you talking about Achmed?
You clearly don’t know much about economics (like the Orange Baboon in Pennsylvania Ave).

The only reason countries export is so they can raise sufficient income to IMPORT goods that they desire from other nations.
Of course, in the days when the world was on the Gold Standard, if you exported a certain dollar value to a country, but imported more in return, you would settle the difference in gold.
Naturally, the country that imported more than it exported would soon have its gold holdings drained in no time if it continued in this fashion and didn’t OFFSET those excess imports with one country by having a net gold inflow from exporting more to other countries.

This is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 1960’s/early 70’s as various countries demanded gold in exchange for their USD – because they realised the ZOG owned U.S Federal Reserve was printing far more USD than they could back up with physical gold.
That’s why Nixon closed the Gold/USD exchange.

Now, in the Fiat Monetary era, where currency is backed by nothing, countries export their products for a more or less equal amount of imports from other countries.
But, when one imports more than it exports, the difference can be settled with payment of a HARD CURRENCY (USD, Euros, GBP, CHF etc).

However, because the U.S has the exorbitant privilege of having the world reserve currency, it is THE ONLY COUNTRY ON EARTH THAT CAN PAY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF WHAT IT IMPORTS with CONJURED OUT OF THIN AIR USD.

Summary: When China or another country exports something to the U.S, said products required the input of much effort to come into existence.
They required the use of Land, Labour & Capital (not to mention the sweat of the brows of the citizenry of that country), to manufacture in the first place.
In exchange the U.S pays for what they want with freshly conjured greenbacks.

It is ABUNDANTLY OBVIOUS as to which country is ripping off the other!! (Although not so obvious to economic dunces like you Achmed and the Orang-U-tan).

The good news UR readers, is that the world is fast waking up from its stupor, and soon enough world reserve currency status for the USD will be no more.
When that happens, the U.S will enter an inflationary depression, the likes of which no major nation has ever witnessed.
The canary in the coal mine is, as always, the price of gold.
The gold price bottomed out at USD $1050 in 2015 and sits at over USD $2900 today.

In other words holders of USD are dumping them at a prodigious rate in preparation for the collapse of that currency.
You have much to learn about economics Achmed (as indeed you likewise do in relation to the crimes of Malignant International Jewry).
You need to stop reading the garbage from those ZOG affiliated sources you rely on and instead focus on objective info.

And on that score, you will not do better than Dr Ron Paul.
The man is literally a living treasure.

40 years of free trade, comparative advantage, libertarian policies

Sammy, you’re certainly not talking about the U.S.
There has been NOTHING IN THE WAY OF LIBERTARIAN POLICIES practised in the U.S in the last 60 years – hence the reason why the U.S today is a Socialist shit-hole.
Contrast that to the 130 or so years from the beginning of the republic until the creation of the ZOG owned Federal Reserve in 1913, when the U.S came as close as any nation in recorded history to being a Libertarian Free Market Capitalist utopia – hence the reason why the vast majority of its population was lifted out of subsistence poverty and into the middle class and beyond.

Sammy, do you actually understand what the CORE FOUNDATIONS of Libertarianism are?
It appears from your comments that you are CLUELESS.
Libertarianism is all about:

1) Limited Gubmint. (The actual outcome is that Big Gubmint has grown like a cancer – esp. beginning with the policies of the first Jewish President LBJ).

2) Running Balanced Budgets or surpluses (ie: living within your means).

3) NO central bank (and certainly not one owned by a cabal of Talmudic misfits who digitally conjure scores of trillions of USD ex nihilo and dole it out to themselves and their small hat cronies).

4) Negligible (and ideally) NO Income or corporate taxes.
(To the extent that there is any Federal Gubmint remaining it could be funded by a 5% VAT/Consumption tax), which would be more than enough to fund the essential workings of Gubmint.

5) Pursuit of the NON-AGGRESSION principle. ie: none of these murderous wars of aggression against countries that never threatened the U.S (and wouldn’t have the capacity to do so even if they wanted to).

6) An end to subsidising of the genocidal Apartheid Israel state and that poisonous dwarf Zelensky and his Judeo-Ukrainian regime, in that pointless proxy war.

7) SOUND MONEY – that’s the BIG one. An immediate return to the Classical Gold Standard.
Because that would ensure fiscal and monetary discipline and makes it impossible to fund these endless wars fought on behalf of ZOG and the Apartheid Israeli state.

The reality is that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE CORE REQUIREMENTS HAVE BEEN MET.

Summary: Sammy, it hadn’t escaped my attention that you’ve been posting all manner of uninformed B.S in many of the UR threads (some of which were just flat out bald-faced lies).
You should keep your asinine opinions to yourself.
You’re a Know-Nothing clown.

The fact is, in the era of the Founding Fathers, the U.S had minimal Gubmint as a % of GDP.
It had negligible governmental intrusion in the way of impediments and regulatory barriers that hindered the private sector from doing what it does best. ie: wealth generation that lifts all demographics.
(And of course there were no Income or Corporate taxes levied).

Exacxtly, and that’s what I just got done writing. And there were tariffs. They were enough to support the very small Federal government, as compared to today’s.

So, you are full of shit here. Now, you’re bring up that same stupid “Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression” nonsense that was made fun of even in a 1980s movie. (Fast Times at Ridgemont High). The FED’s meddling with the money supply and then socialist scumbag* FDR making it that much worse – got better but then his programs caused it to hit bottom in 1937 – was the cause.

Dude, where do you get these “facts” of yours? You have good Libertarian principles, but you know no history.

When the U.S economy descends into the abyss (and the USD loses is world reserve currency status), the rest of the world will rejoice as the Great Satan gets its well deserved comeuppance.

Well, that’s indeed gonna happen, as there’s no easy way out of this debt hole. The rejoicing part though? Nah, your sorry ass is going to be shitting bricks. How will you ever actually get a job then, as per your Dad’s admonitions?

.

* I agree that LBJ was even worse.

There has been NOTHING IN THE WAY OF LIBERTARIAN POLICIES practised in the U.S in the last 60 years

Unlimited immigration, unlimited infanticide, unlimited foreign subsidized imports. All libertarian policies, all rabidly implemented to destroy the traditional Christian family.

Does your imam handler know you are making a fool of yourself? Your jihad masters would prefer you stick to claiming EVERY Sunni terrorist attack is a Jewish false flag.

We are on to you. Your attempts to gaslight us with infantile economic comments to cloak your true cause of promoting Sunni supremacy is failing. You will be back to coordinating man love Thursdays in Afghanistan if you don’t up your game.

Sam, I tend to see these types, Mr. Vigilante and that Roatan Bill that used to write here as more autistic or having some types of personality disorders than evil minions or “controlled opposition”. (I know you didn’t mention the latter, but that’s one I’m always wary about believing.)

T-V,

Quote:

“the U.S today is a Socialist shit-hole.”

I believe that you have it wrong. The U.S. today is a fascist, oligarchic shithole.

I am of the belief that ALL roads lead to tyranny – capitalism, communism, fascism, libertarianism and socialism. ALL – including capitalism and libertarianism. That is because greed and selfishness are inherent in man’s human nature.

What we have here in the USA, in my opinion, is “capitalism on steroids” and it will only be a matter of time before the American people give up their remaining few constitutional rights.

I read a very long column at the Future of Freedom Foundation website and the column explained libertarianism in exquisite detail. As I was reading it, I thought to myself what a wonderful system that would be, IF we lived in a perfect world, with no greed or selfishness. But we do not and we will always have greed and selfishness, REGARDLESS of the political system.

I am of the opinion that all of the “isms” sound great in theory, but greed and selfishness ruin them all. As I have said many times before, I am all for capitalism, with the absolute minimum of laws and regulations in place to protect the people from the predatory actions of businesses and the financial industry.

Thank you.

The man is literally a living treasure.

Yes, he is. He’s not a god though, and he’s not always right. Tariffs are the right thing to help bring manufacturing back to America. Yes, there’ll be short term financial pain, but there’s gonna be no matter what is done now, with Trump in charge, even were Ron Paul in charge! (Unlike most of the others, he not only didn’t get us into this mess, but he tried his best to warn Americans where things were heading.)

You are not a god either, are you T.V.? You’ve made so many errors in the comments here, and that’s within a 24 hour period! You won’t go read the link on the Paul Wellstone aircraft accident (in the previous RP thread) because you don’t want to get into any details to figure things out – hand-waving is apparently all you know how to do or reading people who do hand-waving speculation.

Sure, yeah, it was all a conspiracy, the King Air, the icing conditions, the 2 pilots who died and their gf/wifes who gave testimony, the airport automated weather station, the VOR, the airport manager who checked out the weather and the crash site just afterwards, other pilot reports, the Duluth Approach Controller… sure, yeah, they were ALL NeoCons!

Mark G. was on the money with what he told you. You think you are right about everything, and even if we here agree within 99% and so much more than with some random American, you feel the need to go all autistic. Yet you miss the very biggest problems America has right now, which are demographic, not economic. With friends like you, Libertarians and Conservatives don’t need enemies.

I know Ron Paul, and you, Truth Vigilante, ain’t no Ron Paul, and you ain’t no treasure either.

Yes, I know all about the history of REAL money. BTW, the/ low in recent times lasted a number of years, as gold stayed in the $300-$350/oz range from the end of last century through ’03 or so. Silver was something like 5 bucks an oz during this time. Fiat money and fractional reserve banking are indeed the reason the $$ will head down the toilet any time – wish I could know exactly when.

However, even off the gold standard, the US was a manufacturing powerhouse through the mid-1990s. Do you recall Reform Party Presidential candidate Ross Perot talking about that “giant sucking sound” 33 years ago? I do. He was talking about out-sourcing manufacturing to Mexico via NAFTA. (Bush, Sr and Clinton didn’t care – they were part of it) Within only a few years the work was heading to China, via its now Most Favored Nation Status.

This was accomplished by greedy, unpatriotic :”Americans” in both the Feral Gov’t and their Big-Biz cronies. Do you not know ANYTHING about this?

If tariffs are theft then you cannot allow the thieves to steal your money without stealing theirs in return.

Whatever they choose, consumers will be worse off because they cannot spend their money the way they prefer.

Whose monies are they spending?

Americans currently hold a record $1.2 trillion in credit card debt, with many individuals struggling to manage their balances due to high interest rates and inflation. The average household has over $21,000 in credit card debt.

Politics is tyranny. As long as violence is the main tool of compliance, it will be. Until humans learn to eschew violence in favor of persuasion & voluntary association, it will be. We should be figuring out how to eliminate big gov, not arguing over which is the best way to fund it.

Unlimited immigration, unlimited infanticide, unlimited foreign subsidized imports.

Hello again, Sam. It’s a shame that the 1st of these is officially Reason magazine and the Libertarian Party* policy nowadays. It does NOT have to be a Libertarian policy. As for the 2nd, there are Libertarians on both sides of this issue. The latter, yes, they don’t care that trade is unfair to the US, so long as we do our part… until the country has so many foreigners who have no idea what Libertarianism, free trade, limited government, or Reason magazine too, are about. Also, yes the $ will have gone down, and these nice principles will be long forgotten in the struggle.**

You will be back to coordinating man love Thursdays in Afghanistan if you don’t up your game.

I don’t see why that would preclude this guy from still ranting on the internet. Embrace the power of “and”, as they say. ;-}

…all rabidly implemented to destroy the traditional Christian family.

I think that T.V. is mostly on the right track as far as which ethnicity is big on these things. However, he’s thinking kind of binary here, as there’s a whole lot more to it, as, granted, he did write about in one of his comments on the previous RP post’s thread.

Francis T.V., lighten the fuck up, alright?
.

* Which has gone down the tubes over the last 25 years – no longer the party of your Harry Brownes of yesteryear.

** Unlike during Great Depression 1.0, the country is no longer unified enough to have the same ideas on how to deal with it. There WILL be Communists not letting a crisis go to waste!

I just find it odd that the mainstream press, all of the sudden, is pro market on tariffs.
These are the same people that will support, or be neutral, on every other tax. My suspicion is they “horse-trade” on positions, to get to a planned outcome.
I would argue, libertarians need to distinguish government spending that is income transfer, and the rest. The USAID revelations show there is no “waste,” only money laundering.

But yes, the argument is unilateral free trade is a net benefit to the US. That implies countries with a trade surplus with the US don’t know what they are doing.

This site is full of Han and Sunni glossers. Both think white Americans who disagree with our Zionist controlled government, should run into their arms. And if we don’t, lookout.

Han: “Razy Americans you can’t put talliffs on high quarlity Chinese products. That racism. Talliffs don’t work. We take arr your industry. But don’t worry we treat you better than your Jew bribed poriticians.”

Sunni: “all the beheadings, Christian genocides, truck attacks, raping white girls, that’s just Jewish false flags. If you say different, YOUR A MOSSAD AGENT!”

I don’t want another dollar ever going to Israel or Ukraine. We should close all our bases in the Middle East and Europe. China can do what ever they want with Taiwan. Just because I have these opinions, doesn’t mean I like Hans and Sunnis, because I don’t.

for the first time I can think of, I disagree with Dr. Ron Paul

if another country is putting tariffs on your products going into their markets, why shouldn’t you reciprocate?

But more to the point, is if another country is paying their workers ten dollars a week, and has no environmental regulations, then how are you supposed to compete with that?

You can’t. You can do two things, let the market drive your workers wages down to poverty levels, or put tariffs on their products coming into your markets to make up for the differences in wages.

I didn’t read all the comments, but I just offered my own perspective on tariffs.

I just find it odd that the mainstream press, all of the sudden, is pro market on tariffs.

I don’t think they are pro market. I remember them opposing free markets when Reagan was promoting them. What the Jew run media is doing is simply opposing whatever Trump policy is so they can create negative Trump narratives.

Agreed, HT. What’s interesting to me is that ZeroHedge commenters, the large majority of whom lean Conservative and pro-Trump, are getting sore because they think the recent stock market losses are due to tariffs or threats thereof. We’re only talking about an 8-9% drop from the recent high.

Hell, I had no idea the Dow Jones was even out of the 30,000’s, so little do I care or pay attention.

The ZH people would be the first to tell you how the economy incl. stock market is a sham, but they still want to “make money” off it.

Armed theft of a continent? You’re joking, right? The Continental United States was a mostly empty forest with a handful of savage tribes fighting each other to extinction. Ask the Iroquois what they did to the Algonquin, or the Sioux what they did to the Kiowa. The US wasn’t “stolen” by any stretch of the imagination. It was settled, mostly by peaceful pioneers who occasionally had to fight to defend themselves from savages who were living in the stone age.

Trump has declared war on Canada by other means, we remember Trudeau and Mrs Trump flirtatious behaviour last time the Don was in the Whitehouse, has someone been whispering little lies in Donalds ear?

Well Don where are the massed troops on the Canadian border? Without the threat of he barrel of a gun then Canada won’t budge because the old Ally’s are fast becoming new enemies.

So Don either put up or shut up, like you have said many times might is right.

No government can be better than its rulers, and by that standard
most nations are doomed to suffer strife and oppression since our
leaders generally are puppets of the wealthy.

There are no current “philosopher kings” as envisioned by Plato,
although Putin, Xi Jinping and a few others may approach that
status.

Only a total separation of wealth and political power can
achieve equitable governance.

Rich parrots here some of the favorite rationalizations our domesticated Human Relations indulge in to excuse their bloody rampage across Turtle Island. The arrival of the pillagers on our Sunrise coast began the displacement of Peoples who had lived where they were at that time for many, many generations. Inevitably this “domino effect” saw clashes between Native Nations over the fundamental need we all have for room to live. For all of that, there was no change in the basic way we went about conducting our interactions with each other. Nobody actually rubbed-out anybody else. Some smaller nations did get absorbed by larger ones. The “Iroquois” are an Algonquian People. The Kiowa are “Siouxian” in their own origins.

The at-least thirty million of us here at the time of the first European incursions were hardly a mere “handful.” We had lived in the same basic “territorial” configurations for at-least hundreds of generations….more like thousands according to the “anthropological” evidence. We had no designs on Europe or the degraded and degenerate conditions that prevailed there, and which were what drove their sufferers to participate in the armed invasion of Turtle Island. Without exception our resistance to “settlement” was in defense of our homes and way of life right where we lived, and not anyplace else.

That Rich feels compelled to resort to the usual historically false canards to “justify” what was in actual fact an armed invasion and occupation of Turtle Island by an alien race, itself betrays a realization at some level that his argument is baseless. Anyhow, when it comes to “savages living in the stone-age,” what does rich thinks all his own Kinds’ “modern weapons” are made-of and propelled-by except sticks and stones reworked into the shapes and forms they have today? Talk about living in a glass house. Besides, what was good for the “American” goose ought to be alright for the Asian gander….when what went around comes back around.

So, you are full of shit here.
Now, you’re bring up that same stupid “Smoot-Hawley caused the Great Depression” nonsense that was made fun of even in a 1980s movie. (Fast Times at Ridgemont High).

Everyone that has studied the Great Depression objectively knows that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, whilst not responsible for the onset of the Depression, GREATLY EXACERBATED IT, as world trade shrunk precipitously (and with it a flood of job losses).

If you don’t know this, then you are one very uninformed individual indeed.
Of course, Herbert Hoover was a RINO. He was Keynesian long before that term had even been invented. He increased Gubmint spending like a drunken sailor.
And then FDR doubled down by doing everything Hoover did – only in threefold measure (thus turning what would’ve been a short/sharp recession into a prolonged Great Depression).

But juvenile Achmed is convinced that Smoot Hawley played no part in the Depression.
Because a stoned Sean Penn at Ridgemont High told him so.
Achmed, your knowledge of historical facts and poor grasp of economics is on display here.
You go on to write:

Dude, where do you get these “facts” of yours?

Now, straight off the bat, let me get a few facts straight.
Because ZOG feared the ascent of the Libertarian Party, they have long ago been infiltrated by nefarious entities.
In the 2024 Presidential election for example, the L.P candidate was some woke dude who was all for the Covid clot shots/Gubmint tyranny and lockdowns etc.

Said idiot does NOT represent me. I’m an anarcho capitalist and RON PAUL Libertarian.
And EVERYTHING I say on economics is in LOCKSTEP what Dr Paul has said on the same issues.
So when you criticise me you’re simultaneously giving Dr Paul a slap across the face.
I have watched (most in their entirety – and skimmed through some of the rest when pressed for time), nearly every episode of the 2000+ Ron Paul Liberty Reports over the last decade or more, together with countless videos/key note addresses he’s delivered at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, in Congress and on You Tube, going back to the 1970’s.

And unlike that clown Hildebrand that claims Libertarians advocate for unlimited immigration, Ron Paul does not.
I’ve had exchanges with the LEADING SAYAN in this webzine over recent years.
He’s a Jewish guy called John’s Johnson, and my smack downs of him are legendary.
J & J claimed the same thing about Ron Paul, and in return I posted video after video showing Ron Paul saying: ‘The U.S should secure its borders and stop the flow of illegal immigration’.

Hildebrand, in comment # 13, also alleges the Libertarians are for unlimited infanticide, subsidised imports … etc
He just makes shit up on the fly.
The fact is that Dr Ron Paul MD, a specialist OB/GYN, has delivered over 4000 babies in his professional career.
There is NO ONE (not even close) in the U.S congress (past or present over the last 50 years), that is as much PRO-LIFE as Dr Ron Paul.
This Hildebrand clown just drips with mendacity. UR readers take note.

Next, getting back to your silly ‘Dude, where do you get these “facts” … ?’ remark of yours, I get them from the best, most objective people – individuals with unimpeachable integrity.
Individuals like Economics Professor Emeritus Thomas DiLorenzo (I posted a link in comment # 9, to an article he wrote from LewRockwell.com – a website that I’ve spent countless hours on over the years), as DiLorenzo (who is also the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a personal friend of Dr Ron Paul), emphatically demonstrates the destructiveness of tariffs.

But, your were TOO LAZY to read what he had to say. That’s says a lot about you Achmed.
Your head is full of claptrap but you don’t actually pay heed to what the truth tellers are saying.
Lastly, in relation to this statement of yours (presumably relating to how I’ll cope when the U.S economy/stock/and bond markets implode):

your sorry ass is going to be shitting bricks.
How will you ever actually get a job then, as per your Dad’s admonitions?

I’m a self employed boomer and I’m doing just fine – thanks for asking.
Now, as I’m Australian, and seeing as my country (infested with corrupt politicians as it is), has been a loyal vassal of he Anglo-Zionist empire for some time, there will be some economic disruption to our economy as we take a couple of years to untether ourselves from the orbit of the ZOG controlled USSA and unshackle ourselves from debt usury to the Talmudic financiers in the ‘Square Mile’.

But shortly thereafter, Australia (with a population of 27 million and a ton of natural resources), will sign up on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and establish much closer trade/diplomatic/security ties with the Sino-Russian Super Hegemon of the planet.
Thereafter we’ll be sitting pretty as prosperity abounds for our great nation (coupled to a housecleaning that sees all those corrupt politicians that were subordinate to the Anglo-Zonist empire being turfed out).

Simply put it will be all sunshine and blue skies for Australia once we extricate ourselves from the sinking ship otherwise known as the USSA*.
(*USSA=United Socialist States of America). Because, as we’ve all long known, America today is a Socialist shit-hole, infested with half-wits like Sam Hildebrand and his rabid leftist ilk.

thank you Dr. Paul

Thanks for your comments Brad – I appreciate them as always.
And yes, the U.S. today is a fascist, oligarchic shithole as you mentioned.
But, in relation to this statement of yours:

What we have here in the USA, in my opinion, is “capitalism on steroids” ….

However, not only is there no ‘Capitalism on steroids’ taking place, the fact is there is NO CAPITALISM of substance being practised in the Big End of town in America, as Crony Corporatism is the order of the day.
Under Crony Corporatism, the oligarchs schmooze up to corrupt Big Gubmint to enact legislation/tariffs/impose regulatory impediments to new entrants that might take market share away from the established players.
This entrenches (and expands upon) the MONOPOLIES of these ZOG/ZOG affiliated oligarchs.

That is NOT CAPITALISM.
Under Capitalism consumers are spoiled for choice and can choose to patronise that business which delivers the best product at the best price.
That is the essence of Capitalism. ie: FREEDOM OF CHOICE.

But in the U.S there are all manner of Gubmint mandates. A certain % of cars purchased (and said % is earmarked to increase over time), must be those fast depreciating/prone-to-combust EV lemons.
That is Fascism as you correctly point out Brad.

So Brad, don’t fall for the lies from the ZOG owned MSM, which is portraying Capitalism as the culprit for America’s woes, as being responsible for the 2008 GFC.
The fact is that it was BIG GUBMINT (and the ZOG owned Fed) that was solely responsible for the Subprime Mortgage Meltdown that led to the 2008 GFC.

In relation to Dr Ron Paul, you wrote:

Yes, he is. He’s not a god though, and he’s not always right.
Tariffs are the right thing to help bring manufacturing back to America.

You know, no one is infallible. And no doubt, if we dug deep enough, we could find some inconsequential matter that Dr Paul erred on.

But you know what Achmed, (and I say this hand on heart), I can’t think of a single substantive thing he’s gotten wrong in the last 50 years.
So let’s hear it from you, show me PROOF of something he got wrong.
You’ve made a big statement about Dr Paul, so you need to back that up with BIG evidence.

Of course, in your uninformed and economically illiterate opinion, it may be that you believe Dr Paul is wrong on tariffs, so UR readers can read into that what they will.
But the reality is this:

1) Yes, in THAT particular industry where American businesses compete with a Chinese/Canadian/Mexican manufacturer, said American corporation may create a few extra jobs.

2) BUT, there will be a NET LOSS OF JOBS from the U.S economy as a whole.

Think about it. If a widget (that all American households currently use), that used to cost $10 ends up costing $12.50 after Donald Chump’s 25% tariff, that represents an extra $2.50 x 100 million households in the U.S, of extra money that U.S consumers now have to spend.
ie: $250 million more than they were paying before.

Well, that means $250 million LESS money that consumers have to spend on other goods and services THAT EMPLOYED OTHER AMERICANS.
In other words, there will be JOB LOSSES in those other businesses where that $250 million was previously spent, but is not being spent there now.
But Achmed can’t work that out.

Moreover, here’s the REAL KICKER in relation to Chump’s tariffs:
i) Items that have tariffs imposed on them, will not necessarily mean that consumers will buy American products instead. (In fact, to the extent that consumers switch from buying the product from China, Mexico or Canada, they will in almost all cases switch to buying a product made in another third world hell-hole).

Example: A widget made in China costs $10 pre-tariffs, and $12.50 post tariffs
Now, is China the only manufacturer of said widget in the world? In most case the answer is NO.
Bangladesh, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and the U.S also make that widget, and their retail prices are $10.75, $11.20, $11.80 and $17.25 for the U.S manufacturer respectively.

YES, some people out of patriotism will buy the U.S made product (these are the SAME people that were buying it pre-tariffs, so there will be NO additional sales/jobs created for the U.S manufacturer).
But the vast majority will buy from one of the other countries, whose product is now cheaper than the $12.50 Chinese product.

End Result: NO NEW JOBS CREATED for U.S businesses making that product, while simultaneously the trade deficit BLOWS OUT even more as Americans have to fork out more to buy the same product from another third world supplier.
In other words: a LOSE/LOSE outcome for Americans.

You go on to write:

You are not a god either, are you T.V.?
You’ve made so many errors in the comments here, and that’s within a 24 hour period!

Well then, it should be easy for you to dredge up some of those errors I made – otherwise you’ll look like a liar in front of the UR readership.
So, let’s see those errors. (BTW, it’s not enough to say something is an error because ‘Achmed says so’. We need PROOF that I wrote stuff in error.

The fact is, I don’t write what I do based on a whim. I can back up everything I say. I’m careful to cross my t’s and dot my i’s and always source my info from the very best people who are NOT BEHOLDEN TO ZOG (unlike the U.S Gubmint agencies where you source your info from – which are choc-a-bloc full of lies and distortions).

That said, no one gets it right all the time. And it’s possible I made a typo, or put the decimal point in the wrong place in something I wrote.
So let’s hear it – what do you allege I got wrong*?

(*A word of warning: Before you make accusations of wrongfulness, you had better be damn certain that I am actually wrong. Because I don’t take kindly to being falsely accused of something, and you can be certain that I will wipe the floor with you as a consequence and embarrass you in front of the UR readership).
Lastly, in relation to the obvious murder of Paul Wellstone, you write:

the King Air, the icing conditions, the 2 pilots who died and their gf/wifes who gave testimony, the airport automated weather station, the VOR ….. the Duluth Approach Controller… sure, yeah, they were ALL NeoCons!

Let me respond to that with something we all experienced during the Covid Psyop.
I know (as I knew in REAL time before the clot shots had even been rolled out), that they were dangerous. I listened to the BEST people – the Dr Peter McCullough’s, Dr Robert Malone’s (he being the man that pioneered the mRNA technology), Dr Ron Paul’s, Dr Mike Yeadon’s, the Sucharit Bhakdi’s etc – and it was OBVIOUS that these toxins were unsafe.

FOR CERTAIN many doctors knew this also. Sure, some doctors are non-critical thinking automatons like you Achmed, and they believe whatever their wise overlords in Gubmint or the ZOG controlled Health Bureaucracies tell them.
And the latter told them the toxic jabs were ‘safe and effective’.

But let’s just focus on those doctors (millions around the world) who knew the jabs were unsafe but SAID NOTHING. Why do you think they did that?
Of course they kept quiet because they observed what happened to other courageous colleagues that lost their licence to practise medicine because they spoke up, because they gave Ivermectin to their patients etc.

I don’t even know why I even have to say what I’ve said above, because every THINKING adult knows this. But the reality is:

PEOPLE WILL SAY WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY, because to say otherwise will ENTAIL LOSS OF THEIR JOB/CAREER/being unable to pay the mortgage on their home etc.

So, let’s just focus on the testimony (supposedly given to the NTSB) of the gf/wives of the two pilots that died in the plane that Wellstone was on.
I ask you: Were these girlfriends/wives talking on their phones to the men in the cockpit as said plane was experiencing difficulties?
Did the wives say they heard the pilots say stuff like: ‘We have loss of propulsion’ or ‘ the starboard aileron has just fallen off’ etc?

In other words WHAT THE EFF can the wives/gf’s add that will be of assistance in the investigation? You’re just making shit up Achmed. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Now, in relation to the testimonies of the airport manager, the Duluth Approach controller and the rest, HOW THE EFF DO YOU KNOW that what was alleged to be their testimony (as per the NTSB report), was in fact what they actually said?

Admit it Achmed, YOU HAVE NO EFF’N IDEA WHAT THEY REALLY SAID.
You weren’t there as an eyewitness personally monitoring their first hand reports.
You know JACK SHIT about what really went down.

Summary: The Zionist Usury Banking Cartel (aka ZOG), that cabal of Talmudic financiers operating out of the ‘Square Mile’, possess multiples of U.S GDP in financial wherewithal, with the capacity to print/digitally conjure scores of trillions more with a key stroke on their western central bank computers, which they can dole out to themselves and their Jewish cronies.

So, after murdering JFK/RFK/JFK Jr or Senator Paul Wellstone (and half his family), do you honestly think they’re just going to sit there in the underground vaults of the Bank of England stroking their gold bars all day long?
Of course they will mobilise countless billions of their resources to:
i) Buy people off
ii) Intimidate/threaten those that don’t
iii) Kill off those that don’t fall into the preceding two categories.

Achmed, I’m astonished at how naive and child-like you are, in believing immediately all that your ‘wise overlords’ in Big Gubmint tell you.
Surely, you can’t be THAT stupid?

I just find it odd that the mainstream press, all of the sudden, is pro market on tariffs.

Why are you shocked?
Donald J Chump (as are ALL individuals that progress beyond the primaries to be able to contest the Presidency from both sides of the aisle), are carefully vetted for servility to ZOG.

And the MSM is owned by (and takes orders from) ZOG.
So when the ZOG elders say ‘write positive things about Chumps tariffs’, they dutifully comply.
Now some of you (the gullible among you), will say: ‘ Well how come the MSM was against Donald Chump in the 2016, 20, 24 elections?.

Of course that was all ‘theatre’. They did that on purpose.
By making it appear that the MSM, that the GOP elders (Dubya Bush, Mitch McConnell), that the other Deep State actors and Gubmint agencies like the FBI etc, were all against Chump, this gave the impression to the lumpen proletariat that Chump must be against the Deep State – when in fact he as was as thick as thieves with them from Day One.

T-V,

As always, thanks for the reply.

I have news for Ron Paul – in my opinion, the entire economy of the United States (and the economies of the rest of the so-called free world) is (are) based on theft. The American people are being robbed blind – by the collection of interest on fictitiously created money; as a result of inflation and the collection of personal income taxes and on interest on major purchases – even if paid for by cash.

Anywhere one drives, one can see huge “stocks” of things for sale – vehicles, campers, rental equipment, etc. All of this was “paid for by fictitious money” and interest being charged on these loans. And WHO pays this interest? The customers!

And who is doing all of this stealing? The government – the Democrats and Republicans perpetuating this farce; the bureaucrats, the bankers and the persons running the corporations.

There is an organization here in the USA called Optimist International. I don’t know if they still have local chapters, where people get together and tell each other how much better things are getting and having reasons for hope, but I cannot see how anyone in his or her right mind could attend one of these meetings. I see absolutely NOTHING getting better here in the USA. Things just keep getting worse and worse.

A nice lady who lives down the street in my neighborhood has a sign in her front yard that she apparently obtained from her church. The sign reads “Hope changes everything!” Every time I walk by that house on my daily walks, I laugh. I am tempted to ask her how her hope is working out for her. But that would not be nice. So I just keep my thoughts to myself.

Many people here in the USA are of the mind that Trump is going to make things better for them. I voted for Trump, only because I thought that he was “the least of the worst.” Trump is a billionaire and one of the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes Magazine. If people think that Trump is going to do ANYTHING that will lessen his net worth or that of his millionaire and billionaire associates, they had better think again. The same goes for Elon Musk, whom I despise.

The theft continues and will continue unabated.

Thank you.

The economic effects are a good enough reason to oppose raising tariffs. However, the main reason to oppose tariffs is that tariffs, like all taxes (including the inflation tax), are theft.

What about the relevant legal and/or constitutional questions? Conspicuously absent from this essay is the important question of whether or not the fat orange bastard in the white house has the legitimate authority (apparently under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, to the extent this act is itself constitutional) to impose these tariffs in the first place – especially in the arbitrary and capricious manner in which he’s doing it – which he very likely does not.

I agree that all taxes are a form of “theft” but some are more unfair, immoral and damaging than others; so what about the unfair and potentially devastating impact that the tariffs (and/or retaliatory tariffs) will have on some sectors of the economy, e.g. farming?

Left unchallenged, the psychotic impulses and narcissistic rage of the fat orange bastard in the white house will likely destroy what’s left of America.

So when the ZOG elders say ‘write positive things about Chumps tariffs’, they dutifully comply.

No, I mean the mainstream press is AGAINST tariffs, and happen to agree with libertarians!
The blob/mainstream press finally found a tax they did not like!

“No, I mean the mainstream press is AGAINST tariffs”

I saw Democrat Joy Reid on MSNBC a while back come out against tariffs and I thought to myself, “she is just against them because Trump is for them”.

The Democrats are returning to their roots. The Southern Democrats seceded from the Union at least partly because they did not like the high tariffs the Republicans supported. If Jefferson Davis was alive today, he and his fellow Democrat Joy Reid would be comrades on the same side against the Republicans.

It strikes me that Dr. Paul is addressing only one side of the equation when dealing with the tariffs.

I believe that the president is using tariffs as a cudgel against countries who use unfair tariffs against the products that we try to sell them, as well as a negotiating tactic. Sooner or later these issues will be ironed out and this country will hopefully be better off with less money leaving our shores and Americans better off.

Another side of the equation is the fact that he has DOGE working to reduce the size and economic impact of government. By highlighting and eliminating waste to the tune of billions of dollars, while also eliminating unnecessary agencies, hopefully he can reduce the deficit and the effect it has on hardworking taxpayers. And if he can tame the excesses that we have seen with the last regime and hold the criminals who committed them responsible so that it doesn’t happen again, maybe real change can occur.

Finally, what it’d like to see is for this crew to observe that part of the constitution that is always ignored by every regime, the part that says that the federal government can only own the District of Columbia and certain forts and magazines. I believe that if this government were to sell off the lands they now own (unconstitutionally) the national debt could be, if not eliminated, seriously dented.

30 million now? It was 1 million, unless you’re counting South of the Rio Grande. And your Injuns murdered the original inhabitants, as well as canabilizing them. They were simple, stone age people who lived a subsistence existence. Truth is, you were easily defeated, the smart Indians learned to live peacefully with Whites, intermarried and prospered. The savages were defeated. That’s fact. The TV version of the “noble savage” is fiction.

I agree, but you made me cringe by mentioning Joy Reid and Jefferson Davis in the same sentence! Joy Reid Rehabilitating Bill Kristol, Bill Maher forgetting he swooned over Ron Paul during the Bush Jr. years – the fakeness upset me.

So, Tooth, have you been following the teachings of Kim Jong Un?
It sure seems like you admire him.

Joker, you have to give it to Kim Jong Un. In comparison to every U.S President of the last few decades, he’s a saint.
And, unlike you and your bloodthirsty neocon warmongering ilk, he’s opposed to those ZOG elders that control the entirety of the western financial and political systems.

What’s not to like about that?

I’ve come to believe that one of the goals of the ruling jewish collective in reinstalling their loyal servant the fat orange bastard into the white house is to discredit the “MAGA” cult in the eyes of the whole world and to impose a kind of punishment and/or negative reinforcement training on the benighted cultists (just like you’d use these techniques to try to modify the behavior of other animals) while their hero, the fat orange bastard, enthusiastically does their increasingly risky global dirty work.

Contrary to popular belief, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs.

Foreign businesses apparently disagree. Have you not noticed how they react?

Tooth, this is more evidence you are a true Bolshevik and are butt-buddies with Kim.

Right, it is always better to describe parties involved, rather than the “legal entity.” So, Business taxes are paid by employees, shareholders, and consumers. The tax share I don’t now, but obviously, those are the three parties who must pay.

It’s a fundamental disagreement: Is “targeted Mercantilism,” politically preferable? President Trump and China/Chairman Xi agree. Free trade causes people to move around – just look at the US states. So this is an issue beyond economic efficiency.

Think about it. If a widget (that all American households currently use), that used to cost $10 ends up costing $12.50 after Donald Chump’s 25% tariff, that represents an extra $2.50 x 100 million households in the U.S, of extra money that U.S consumers now have to spend.
ie: $250 million more than they were paying before.

No, the point is not for Americans to pay the tariffs. The point is to give American companies a chance to compete, seeing as it’s not like it’s fair them exporting manufactured goods to China. (The Chinese buy lots of commodities, pork (or they buy the American companies for themselves, grain, lumber etd., as if we were a colony.)

I just read a ZH article that reported on 3 American aluminum companies having gone out of business due to a difference in prices in the range of 25%. Americans will have more of a chance to buy from American, keeping the $$ here. That’s the point. (No, tariff money will never cover what Americans pay in income tax, as I wrote above. That’s NOT the point.

i) Items that have tariffs imposed on them, will not necessarily mean that consumers will buy American products instead. (In fact, to the extent that consumers switch from buying the product from China, Mexico or Canada, they will in almost all cases switch to buying a product made in another third world hell-hole).

BS, no reason you can’t slap tariffs on all of them.

In fact, blanket tariffs are the way to go, EXCEPT that Trump is implementing tariffs for the 2 reasons I wrote about top also. Go there and read.

Were these girlfriends/wives talking on their phones to the men in the cockpit as said plane was experiencing difficulties?
Did the wives say they heard the pilots say stuff like: ‘We have loss of propulsion’ or ‘ the starboard aileron has just fallen off’ etc?

In other words WHAT THE EFF can the wives/gf’s add that will be of assistance in the investigation? You’re just making shit up Achmed. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Now, in relation to the testimonies of the airport manager, the Duluth Approach controller and the rest, HOW THE EFF DO YOU KNOW that what was alleged to be their testimony (as per the NTSB report), was in fact what they actually said?

It’s IN THE REPORT, dumbass! If you would read it, you’d see why all that matters. So, you don’t want to get into details on that King Air crash, because you don’t know anything about the subject. If that’s the case, quit the arm-waving based on crap you watched in videos from people who also don’t know anything about the subject.

Let me respond to that with something we all experienced during the Covid Psyop. I know (as I knew in REAL time before the clot shots had even been rolled out), that they were dangerous. I listened to the BEST people

I didn’t need to even listen to the BEST PEOPLE. I didn’t want the shot, I especially was not up for it when they threatened it being mandatory, and I didn’t take it. I imagine more Americans than Australians told the authorities to fuck off, from everything I read about it and saw here. You guys are pussies, but more on this in a further comment.

Well, I wrote this post a week ago: Defeating Globalism: Europeans v Americans. Australia has more in comment with the Euros, and they don’t come out well in this comparison. No, we don’t like our current Regime, but we have more of a chance in changing it than anyone else against their Globalists. (Don’t think the Chinese are any better.)

Say all you want about Chump and the MAGA folks, but, if it’s going to stay peaceful, the efforts of Trump. with all his flaws, on our side fighting the Deep State and Globalism are heartening and welcome all over the world. You weak pussies down in Australia have nothing of the sort – no Trump, no HUGE MAGA movement, both of which are influencing even Euro elections. The problem is that (for 2 examples) the UK is putting people in jail for talking about their version of the Population Replacement Programme and the Germans band together to overrule, or ban period, parties that work for the interest of Germans.

Americans have worked hard for 50 years fairly successfully in most States to roll back gun control efforts. 1/2 the States have Constitutional carry now. Meanwhile in Australia what did guys like “Truth Vigilante” do to stop the gun confiscations – it’s been over 25 years now. What’d you do, sit on your computer and type away? I was there, in Richmond, VA in ’20 with 20 to 40 thousand people (my estimate), 90% of us armed. See There’s great power in numbers – Case study: Richmond, Virginia

The MAGA folks will get more done. It’s pretty exciting right now.

Meanwhile, you want to be in the BRICS. You do realize that there’s no “A” in BRICS, right? You’ve let enough Chinese people in already to buy up the place, and you blokes will become subjects in a plain old colony of China for the resources. I don’t think they give a damn about the White Australian people either. Good luck with that. (No, there’s no room in my bunker for you – sold out.)

In relation to the undeniably true statement that ‘foreign businesses do not pay tariffs’ (because it will be the U.S consumer why actually foots the bill), Mr/Ms Overland responds with:

Foreign businesses apparently disagree. Have you not noticed how they react?

Yes of course, SPECIFIC business owners in China, Canada or Mexico will complain about the tariffs as THEY personally will lose market share and sell less of their products.
But what you (and the economically ignorant Achmed miss), is that the the overwhelming bulk of the lost sales to those Chinese/Mexican/Canadian businessmen, will NOT result in American businesses filling in the void.

Said loss of market share will go to OTHER third world hell holes who will still be far cheaper than the American manufacturers.
Achmed responds by saying that the solution would be to impose tariffs on ALL NATIONS.
But this would result in a WORLD OF HURT for American consumers, as those struggling in today’s environment who are already hard pressed to make ends meet, won’t be able to afford the rent and will be forced into those ever expanding tent cities of the homeless or resort to sleeping under freeway overpasses and bridges.

An across the board increase in tariffs will send the rate of inflation sky rocketing – with all the consequences this entails.
Meanwhile, you Mr Overland (and especially the Deficient-In-Economic-Understanding Achmed), desperately need to watch the 2 mins of the following video from 8:10-10:00 as Peter Schiff (former economic advisor for Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential campaign, and the premier economic forecaster on the planet), tells you exactly what Donald Chump’s tariffs will result in:

Video Link

Summary: The imposition of tariffs by Donald J Chump is EXACERBATING THE DECLINE IN THE USD and will fast track the loss of world reserve currency status for the USD.
When the USD loses this exorbitant privilege, it is Game/Set/& Match over for America, as the USSA descends into an inflationary depression which sees it becoming a Banana Republic.

Peter Schiff said the USD index was DOWN 4% in just a matter of a few days.
He said THE DOLLAR IS TANKING.
So this is playing out right now in REAL TIME, as USD holders dump them for REAL MONEY (ie: Gold) which can’t be digitally conjured out of thin air by the ZOG owned Federal Reserve.

And, to the extent that Donald Chump may decide to introduce across-the-board tariffs on all nations, this will FAST TRACK the demise of the USD and send inflation to the moon.

Anyway, I for one am excited by all of this. I sincerely hopes Chump jacks ups tariffs to the stratosphere, because I KNOW what’s coming thereafter.
Meanwhile Achmed, you and the other clueless MAGAts can keep hoping all you like that Chump will be the saviour. He is nothing of the sort. He’s a ZOG sock puppet through and through.

His job is to purposely WRECK the U.S economy.
That way, in the aftermath of the wreckage, the ZOG controlled MSM and talking heads will say:
‘You see, Capitalism doesn’t work. What we need is an all powerful centralised Authoritarian Socialist Gubmint that will deliver “equity” and equitable outcomes’.

But the reality was that there was no Capitalism (at least in the Big End of town) being practised in America in the last 35 years anyway.
The U.S had long ago descended into being a Socialist shit hole.

Lastly Achmed, if you’re reading this (which I know you are), what’s with this stupid remark of yours (referencing the bogus NTSB report on Senator Paul Wellstone’s plane crash)?:

It’s IN THE REPORT, dumbass!

What don’t you understand about the following statement?:

The NTSB/NIST reports on ANY ZOG CONJURED CRIME (whether it be the destruction of TWA Flight 800 from the mid 90’s, the 9/11 False Flag or Wellstone’s plane crash), will be B.S from start to finish.
What’s wrong with you Achmed? You’re like that dude in the movie Trading Places at the end shouting ‘Turn Those Machines Back On!!’ (10 sec video):

Video Link

The only thing is, you be shouting: ‘It’s IN THE REPORT’, and ‘Trust the Science’ (ie: the science of the ZOG controlled NTSB).
Achmed, you’ve descended into the realms of the juvenile. Grow up. Act your age.

Is “targeted Mercantilism,” politically preferable?

Not a politician, I do not pretend to know what is politically preferable. However, as far as what is good for the United States, targeted mercantilism is preferable to free trade in my opinion. Nontargeted mercantilism is also preferable to free trade. I do not know whether targeted is preferable to nontargeted.

Extreme mercantilism (100-percent tariffs and the like) would be unwise, but only moderate mercantilism is on offer in the United States at the moment, and moderate mercantilism is just what I want.

I notice that free traders keep trying to sell me free trade based on putative benefits I do not value. The free traders offer me (1) inexpensive foreign-made consumer goods, (2) humiliation of U.S. organized labor, (3) jobs supplying things foreigners demand, (4) interdependency between the United States and foreign countries, (5) a theoretical, almost imperceptible, Heckscher-Ohlin rise in U.S. GDP due to comparative advantage, and (6) the chance to sneer at my fellow citizens for failing to understand Ricardian trade theory as well as I do. I want none of these things, I don’t value them, I want other things, and I am not the only one that thinks this way.

Harold, I can’t think of anyone who’s been as consistent as you in calling out Donald J Chump (aka the Orange Clown – as you like to call him), as being the ZOG sock puppet that he obviously is.

With that in mind, I think you might enjoy the following comment I posted in another UR thread, accompanied by the video contained within:
https://www.unz.com/runz/candace-owens-ryan-dawson-and-other-conspiracy-podcasters/#comment-7034933

That way, in the aftermath of the wreckage, the ZOG controlled MSM and talking heads will say:
‘You see, Capitalism doesn’t work. What we need is an all powerful centralised Authoritarian Socialist Gubmint that will deliver “equity” and equitable outcomes’.

But the reality was that there was no Capitalism (at least in the Big End of town) being practised in America in the last 35 years anyway.
The U.S had long ago descended into being a Socialist shit hole.

You know, we’re not really in disagreement on very much, T.V. If you’d have left that “controlled opposition” (not your wording, but your meaning here) out of it re President Trump, I’d agree completely with the rest. Indeed the 6 decade running (some would say 9 starting with Roosevelt’s start of this as part of the Great Depression) Welfare State has made America anything but Capitalist. Crony Capitalism is as good a term as “fascism” (Gov’t controlling the economy in cahoots with Big Biz) has too many already abused connotation. Yes, indeed, when things go financially bad, as they MUST, the Commies WILL be coming out of the woodwork saying “See?!!” – just what you wrote above. I couldn’t agree more.

However, this purposeful ruination ramped up with the Black! Light-giver Øb☭ma, but went into much higher gear with Dark Brandon. The purposeful invitation of invasion, a Mariel Boatlift x 100 (see We are all Miamians now) of 12 million foreigners, made it very obvious to all that the idea is to destroy America.

The reason the Establishment has been so anti-Trump since he talked about the immigration invasion 10 years ago (- ~3 months) is that he is NOT in the UniParty. Flaws and all, and there are many, he is doing whatever he’s doing on behalf of Americans. Usually controlled opposition people don’t get nearly shot to death, distracted and harassed via lawfare for years from all quarters (Fed and State), and then have a whole plandemic designed part-reason to keep him from office.

‘

BTW, total aside here, but as you trashed Steve Sailer on the Flu Manchu PanicFest, you have forgotten or never read about something he dug up that was a real scoop, IMO. His promotion of the jab aside, in October of ’20 Mr. Sailer Noticed™ that Pfizer had not released their vax out of testing by the date they should have, as they did not want President Trump to take the credit. They waited until after the election, when their program had been completed just before it.

If you can hold your rage for a coupla seconds, please note that I am not for any of that, and Trump was stupid to go along with his moonshot quickest vax “testing” ever! and all that. My point is that Pfizer worked against Trump in this respect. The scared and panicky type Americans wanted to hear that this vax was gonna save them, and they would have had to credit Trump.

I notice that free traders keep trying to sell me free trade based on putative benefits I do not value.

No one gives a rat’s arse what you value Overland.
As for your claim that I, or anyone else, is offering you a ‘humiliation of U.S organised labour’, you’re making shit up on the fly.
Under the system YOU (and Donald Chump) propose, one of protectionism, the U.S workers will experience:
1) The most humiliation – as real wages fall (along with the USD)
2) A lower standard of living (because it will cost MORE to buy the same stuff* as before)
(*And that’s assuming you actually get the ‘same stuff’ in qualitative terms. It is far more likely you’ll get a LESSER quality product and pay more for it).
3) Chronic inflation (which will soon become runaway inflation as the USD loses world reserve currency status).

As surely as night follows day, ALL of the above will come to pass.
And when it does, I know you won’t have the decency to say: ‘OK, I got it wrong – my hare-brained Socialist ideas didn’t work and are never likely to work).
I know your type. You’re the type that got fully vaxxed and boostered during the Covid Psyop, and no amount of contrary information (incl. deaths and injuries to family/friends/work colleagues etc), will ever convince you that the toxic clot shots were anything other than ‘safe and effective’.

Meanwhile Achmed, since I know you can’t help yourself and are compelled to read my comments, here’s yet another article from Economics Prof. Emeritus Tom DiLorenzo (President of the Mises Institute), that will get you up to speed about the folly of tariffs and who they’ll hurt most:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/03/thomas-dilorenzo/trumps-false-tariff-fairness-argument/

I just got done writing that Ron Paul is not a god to me. Get that? I too have followed him for probably longer than you. I knew of him 30 years ago, have read many of his columns and do watch the 30 min Liberty Reports sometimes. I also read Lew Rockwell and his group back 20-25 years ago and also former Las Vegas Review-Journal Lib. columnist Vin Suprynowicz*. I met the latter in person in Lost Wages, and he gave me a copy of his Ballad of Carl Drega. (He also wrote Send in the Waco Killers, both books that American patriots should read and still can be found on amazon.)

Back to Ron Paul, I went to a rally of his during his primary campaign in late Winter of ’12. I told him in person that “If you want to win [STATE REDACTED], you need to talk about illegal immigration”. Imagine if he’d had heeded my advice. He didn’t due to:

1) He didn’t and maybe still doesn’t understand exactly how important/existential this problem is. If we don’t fix this, I don’t really care about any of the others – may as well have YOUR attitude.

2) As a principled man, he wasn’t going to use the issue just to help him win. It may very well have though, as it did for Trump 3 years later on.

We could have had a much more economically astute guy, who already knew how Congress works, with 30 more IQ points than Trump, and 4 years sooner than Trump. He’d have at least let the BP do its job, and as for economics, he’s the best. If he couldn’t have brought the UniParty down, he could have at least clued Americans in to real economic principles – getting us through a financial SHTF with more knowledge to help Americans ignore the siren song of the Commies.

So, listen, T.V., Ron Paul is a great man and a great politician. That doesn’t mean I have to agree 100% with him. (There’s a 2nd thing too, which still doesn’t bring my agreement out of the 99.x% range.) I looked at my 1st 3 comments here, and there was nothing there for you to get your panties in a wad about. Let people discuss this tariff issue rationally rather than insisting that because Ron Paul says one thing, we MUST all agree.

.

* No, I will never be able to spell his last name on the first shot, but I wrote 3 posts about this great Constitutionalist 7 years back:

“Papiere bitte!” – “Your papers, please!” and memories of Mr. Vin Suprynowicz
“Papiere bitte!” – “Your papers, please!” – Part 2
“Papiere bitte!” – “Your papers, please!” – Stories from the real deal.

I don’t mind reading your comments at all during the times when your meds are holding. I do beg to differ especially right here though:

It is far more likely you’ll get a LESSER quality product and pay more for it).

LOL! How could it be of lesser quality than the Cheap China-made Crap that’s shipped over here today?!

My friend put 2 different NEW master cylinders in his Toyota – one after the other, that is – to replace the original that was leaking fluid, some into the vacuum boost. Both new ones kept applying the brakes. This guy’s worked on cars for 50 years. Both of these were DESIGNED wrong, not just built wrong, so he had to get an internal parts kit from Toyota to fix the old one back up. So, the seller had to return money for both, and my friend has now done the job 3 times.

I don’t think I’m as paranoid as you are, but I could easily be convinced that the Chinese make fucked-up car, machine parts and tools on purpose, to keep Americans from getting work done.

Achmed – Facts don’t matter to Tooth. Whatever you say, no matter how truthful and reasonable, Tooths opinions will not change. Tooth has a head hardcoded with the teachings of Karl Marx.

Usually controlled opposition people don’t get nearly shot to death ….

Agreed.
And since we know 100% FOR CERTAIN that the incident that occurred in Butler PA lats July was CHOREOGRAPHED THEATRE, that there was NO assassination attempt on the Orange Orang-U-tan, this is yet further proof that Chump is controlled opposition.

Click on the link below to a comment I posted in another thread, responding to a deluded fool that actually believed there was a real assassination attempt on the Orange clown (be sure to watch the few minutes of that video within that I’ve specified that proves comprehensively that no one tried to kill Chump):
https://www.unz.com/runz/candace-owens-ryan-dawson-and-other-conspiracy-podcasters/#comment-7034853

Lastly, articles like this one headlined ‘Trump Declares War on Thomas Massie: Vows to Lead Primary Challenge After Massie Opposes Trump-Endorsed Funding Bill’ tell us Chump is NOT working for the American people:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/03/11/trump-declares-war-on-thomas-massie-vows-to-lead-primary-challenge-after-massie-opposes-trump-endorsed-funding-bill/

It is CLEAR who Donald J Chump works for. If you can’t see that Achmed, you’re beyond help.

Autism is no substitute for observation and common sense. I, like you, see the US Feral Gov’t as mostly a force for evil. However, with all of your conspiracy theories – I don’t think there’s anything you take at face value (how about your own parents – are you sure they are your parents, T.V.?) – you assume a whole lot of intelligence and competence that is not presence.

Lyin’ Press/media marketing as with the Jason Bourne movies* has people like you thinking that there are very intelligent competent people that have access to all the information and do things right. I guess you’ve never been to the Highway Dept or a Fed office. Do you know how many D.I.E. people are “working” in Feral jobs and in Big Biz?

So, as for the near-assassination in Butler, PA, Trump’s turning his head at that time was likely an act of God. Additionally, my take is, besides the incompetence and D.I.E. ladies that couldn’t do their job, there was general influence, maybe even a plan, to simply let things happen as they did. People wanted him dead. (That’s not the case with ZOG stooges) The unplanned part was Trump’s turning his head to point out numbers on a chart.

When it comes to Congressman Massie, I’ve been on his side and am on his side vs Trump re the CR vote. I have know idea of all the calculations involving letting the spending ride until November but side with this one of very few non-UniParty Reps, Thomas Massie.

However, your autism prevents you from understanding an obvious thing about Donald Trump. He can be a petty vindictive guy at times. I hadn’t even read your part about the next primary (for Massie), when I’d already thought of Trump’s stupid 14 y/o-schoolgirl type behavior with regard to Jeff Sessions last time. Instead of tweeting about “Sleepy Jeff” to the public for 2 years, he should have asked Sessions to resign in private (call it “spending more time with his family”) got a new guy, and not taken it personally. Instead Trump worked against this A+ voter against the Invasion during Sessions’ primary for Alabama Senator again.

See, that’s Trump. That doesn’t make him controlled opposition or a ZOG stooge. It just makes him a flawed individual. No doubt, it Ron Paul had listened to me, and won the whole shebang in ’12, we’d not have had this nonsense.

.

* See Peak Stupidity‘s take on this in:
Apprehending Jason Bourne, we’re the government and we’re all on it.
Apprehending Jason Bourne (part 2) – All-powerful Feral Gov’t – NOT!
Apprehending Jason Bourne (Part 3) – All-powerful Feral Gov’t – NOT!

BTW, I’m in agreement with this too:

If you don’t know this, then you are one very uninformed individual indeed.
Of course, Herbert Hoover was a RINO. He was Keynesian long before that term had even been invented. He increased Gubmint spending like a drunken sailor.
And then FDR doubled down by doing everything Hoover did – only in threefold measure (thus turning what would’ve been a short/sharp recession into a prolonged Great Depression).

As a well-off businessman, Hoover sent millions (in century-ago $) to Russia to feed starving people over there – 1922 or so. However, he figured he’d get the American taxpayer to do this kind of “charity” work too, for America. So, yes, you’ve got that right. Franklin Roosevelt just ran with this and started the American Welfare State. That had no effect on the economy, no, none at all. [/s]

Mr. E.H. Hail, who comments on TUR had some great comments about the actions, or, better yet, lack thereof, of the Presidents before him, Coolidge being my favorite. He also linked us to books and articles that addressed this Smoot-Hawley business – see this post (just a short humorous post, but it’s the comments below I’m pointing out).

I would not state categorically that Smoot Hawley tariffs did not exacerbate the Depression to some degree – don’t know – but it was NOT the cause of it. More importantly, 2025 is not 1930 by any means. America was self-sufficient back then. America produced everything it needed and more. It was not involved in stupidly-unfair trade deals with anything resembling a China, or even the Taiwans, S. Koreas, etc. Or, Canada! We just weren’t stupid like that back then. Tariffs now have 3 serious purposes, as I already explained. None of them were then. (Perhaps one could say they could have been used as bargaining chips, but they weren’t.) The world and the country are completely different in 2025 from 1930.

My apologies for the movie reference. That was Ben Stein making fun of boring economics in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Speaking of days off, yeah, that ought to be enough for today!

So, as for the near-assassination in Butler, PA, Trump’s turning his head at that time was likely an act of God.

That makes no sense.
Think about it Achmed. If and when there is a genuine assassination attempt on Donald Chump one day, and assuming there is a benevolent God, than that deity would FOR SURE have made certain that Donald Chump turned his head INTO THE BULLET – making sure the evil orange S.O.B died.
Now that scenario would make infinitely more sense.

It is clear that you did not watch the video I posted (contained within the link) – not that you had to watch all of it anyway.
You only needed to watch the few minute I’d specified, which UNAMBIGUOUSLY DEMONSTRATES THAT THIS WAS A FAKE ASSASSINATION attempt.

But you were TOO LAZY Achmed. You’re a MAGAt through and through and you’re not going to let a little thing like cold hard facts get in the way.

Summary: Some people have said that I might have a case of TDS.
And, to be perfectly honest, that is a possibility.
But you know what Achmed? You’re afflicted with someone that is multiples worse. It’s called TFS.
TFS=Trump Fellater Syndrome.

Achmed, it’s unbecoming of you.
And, while you’re at it, wipe that ‘discharge’ that’s trickling down your chin.

I would not state categorically that Smoot Hawley tariffs did not exacerbate the Depression to some degree – don’t know – but it was NOT the cause of it.

You need to watch this 6 min video, which will educate you as to what caused the Depression and what should’ve been done** so that it never got beyond being a short-sharp recession:

Video Link

(**Your choice of Coolidge as a good Prez is OK. But easily better than him was Warren Harding. And the reason for that was how he responded to the 1921 deep recession – which was FAR worse than the first couple of years of the 1929/30 downturn, using any metric you choose to employ).

Simply put, Harding did the OPPOSITE of what Hoover and FDR did, and thus made sure that the 1921 ‘Depression’ that no one knows about, fizzled out in no time.
The video above mentions what Harding did. He GOT GUBMINT OUT OF THE WAY and let the Free Market solve the problem – which it invariably does.

In a nutshell: Making Gubmint bigger is NEVER the solution for delivering prosperity.
Well Achmed, guess what? Donald Chump is making Bloated Big Gubmint even bigger.
That’s why his second term will be a disaster.

It wasn’t really laziness but refusal to be run around by a true paranoid that had me skipping your video. I’ve seen your 2nd one below already, not least due to the nice advertisements on the front. Of course, I agree with all that, not just that she has a nice rack either.

I am quite aware of what went on in Butler, Penn that day, T.V. It helps to follow the story on one’s own early on before they suppress shared videos, i.e., what happened with lots of J6 footage.

Pretty soon now, you’ll have some nice people to show your video clips to. At this nice pleasant institution, some very nice people in white uniforms will be glad for you to share all this with them. In the meantime, in the real world, Trump is what we’ve got. Though it’s in fits and starts, and term 45 was a near complete bust, he HAS learned a lot and others are taking up the slack.

Right now, per ZeroHedge, good Congressman Brandon Gill (the guy who has been pushing for the deportation of Ilhan Omar (D-SO)) is leading an effort to impeach the odious Federal Judge Boasberg. That was my suggestion 8 years ago – you don’t HAVE to put up with these people. If nothing else, ignore these judges – it’s better if they have no standing… because you’ve just decked them… Please clap.

The solution per Truth Vigilante: Keep writing about history and ignore what’s actually going on today. Ignore all those people outside the computer.

I hope it won’t throw you into a rage, but I like Silent Cal just as much. Both of these guys did what a President is supposed to do – administer the Executive Branch and leave stuff alone! “Hey, Ron Paul only sponsored 3 pieces of legislation the whole 35 years!” (Making up the “3” here.) Wait, why would that be bad? We’d be better off if nobody had sponsored anything for the last century.

Anyway, President Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act in May of ’24, bringing unity to the US for 45 years afterward, after America having had a rush of foreigners for 40 years beforehand. The economy is important, but no matter what, one can get a good economy back. When you change the population of the country, there ain’t no going back. OTOH, Harding signed a 1921 immigration bill and would probably have done the same as Coolidge. It’s a draw.

Donald Chump is making Bloated Big Gubmint even bigger.

Right, via the DOGE Committee. I’m learning a lot here, but I’m afraid that’s enough for now.

Right, via the DOGE Committee. I’m learning a lot here, but I’m afraid that’s enough for now.

Actually, DOGE is an attempt to shrink government. Trump has dialed back a bunch of regulatory constraints on business which will help the economy and open us some productive jobs.

He also wants to cancel the Department of Education. This has been overdue for a long time and will devolve control back to the States and local communities.

Tooth does not want that as it run contrary to his Bolshevik outlook.

Trump is certainly no Libertarian, but some of the things he is attempting fits with some of the Libertarian political platform.

Trump is going to get a lot of pushback from Congress and the courts, but he is trying. No doubt when his term is over, opponents will condemn him for not doing what he promised, ignoring the obstructionist activities of other factions.

I am quite aware of what went on in Butler, Penn that day, T.V.

Really?? You knew all along that is was a FAKE assassination and that it was just choreographed theatre designed to suck in the gullible MAGAts?
If so, why did you write this in comment # 61?:

So, as for the near-assassination in Butler, PA, Trump’s turning his head at that time was likely an act of God.

Why the contradictory comments? Were you dishing out some sarcasm when you mentioned the ‘near-assassination’ – seeing as it was OBVIOUS to anyone with eyes and ears that it was all staged (and that there were NO BULLETS FIRED anywhere near to the Orang-U-tan)?
Meanwhile, Joker writes the following in # 67:

Actually, DOGE is an attempt to shrink government.
Trump is certainly no Libertarian, but some of the things he is attempting fits with some of the Libertarian political platform.

It is obvious to all (except the dim-witted Joker), that the few token things DOGE is doing are all window dressing. It’s just some ‘nibbling at the edges’ to appease the hardcore MAGAts, while the big spending Keynesian Donald Chump INCREASES SPENDING FIFTY-FOLD in other areas.

It’s not rocket surgery you know. It’s SIMPLE arithmetic.
If Chump’s first year in office witnesses a LARGER GUBMINT EXPENDITURE than Biden’s last year, then eff’n spending has GONE UP!!
And we will FOR SURE be seeing a greater Gubmint expenditure year after year during Chump’s term – YOU CAN TAKE THAT TO THE BANK.

Bottom Line: Donald J Chump is not ‘attempting’ anything.
He is successfully implementing the ZOG AGENDA (countless scores of billions more to the Apartheid Israeli state/pulling the wool over the eyes of the MAGAts like you Achmed and Joker), with his smoke and mirrors obfuscation.
There will be no substantive Libertarian policies (I mean Libertarian in the purest sense of the word. ie: Ron Paul Libertarianism – seeing as the Libertarian Party itself has long ago been infiltrated by ZOG affiliated actors), enacted during the Orange Baboon’s second term.

The CORE of Libertarianism is SMALL GUBMINT and the Non-Aggression Principle.
Neither of these will be delivered. Not only that, the EXACT OPPOSITE is openly being proposed by Chump and his Talmudic handlers.
The USSA is done for. Future history books will say:
‘It was the Fat Orange Clown that presided over America’s demise’.

Thank you for correcting me re: Butler, Pennsylvania. I am sure that Mr. Corey Comperatore,who had been standing behind Trump, died that moment of a choreographed heart attack. The holes in him had been missed by his doctor during his last physical, and that a piece of lead was found behind him was just a coincidence.

I guess it’s hard for you to remember yesterday, but your point was about President Trump WANTING to spending. No, DOGE and he (that WAS missed sarcasm, Mr. Jokem) are trying to cut expenses. That they will cut enough to bring the deficit down seriously is something I’ve already written about, in Will the DOGE save our economy? and Uhhh, no….

That latter post title kind of gives it away, but, no, besides the military, the other big parts of the expenditures pie are SS, Medicare/aid, and interest. The latter CAN only go down if you cut a whole lot of the former – which won’t happen – and the latter will probably go up nonetheless because right now the net average rate being paid out on Treasury Bonds is still 2%. That HAS to go up. At 7%, interest will be nearly 40% of expenditures, but over HALF of receipts. This is unsustainable, to use that word the tree-huggers like. For those of us who fill out tax forms still by hand, we have seen the new pie charts. Talk about your simple arithmetic…

Yes, Trump may indeed preside over the financial SHTF. That would have been a half century of US Congress’ fault, along with Dark Brandon, Trump-45, Bushes, Clintons … way back, but not Trump-47, I’ll bet and YOU CAN TAKE THAT TO THE BANK... No, I can’t. You won’t remember what you wrote, and they wouldn’t let you write a check to cover your bet from the Institution. (Afraid you might stab yourself with your crayon.).

In the meantime DownUnder, where you live, John Howard’s ‘conservative legacy’ is a disarmed populace facing a migrant crime wave.

The disastrous UC-457 “skilled migration” program was started under his watch in 1996, with the infamous Abul Rizvi in his ear advising him, and has culminated with Indian qualifications now being considered on par with Australia’s. He also threw open the door to Chinese and Indian students which has destroyed the housing market, infrastructure and our national security.

A further part of this border disaster was that he handed out protection visas to Afghanis and Iraqis while the Global War on Terror was raging, and now we have Afghanis bashing lifeguards at community pools.

Furthermore, it was Howard and his then immigration minister Amanda Vanstone, who were responsible for importing the violent crime of the Sudanese into Australia on Global Humanitarian XB-200 visas.

As a result, Sudanese are now 51% of the youth detention population in Victoria and are a high percentage of the immigration detention population. The worst example of their behaviour being the alleged murder of Vyleen White in front of her granddaughter in Brisbane and the subsequent media and political cover-up.

Year after year, firearm restrictions grow ever more onerous and overbearing. Western Australia is currently in a complete mess, as the state government has now banned almost everything. Ironically, WA is the only state in the country where pepper spray is legal, although its use is a grey area. Pepper spray isn’t great against gang of machetes, however it will keep the Indian sex pests at bay for women.

In my view, WA is the canary in the coalmine for what they want to do for the rest of the country – no firearms in civilian hands on a long enough timeline. There’s also the National Firearms Registry proposal, which is about centralising every firearm on one database nationally. Basically, a centralised criminal shopping list and a beachhead for national gun laws where they plan to use WA’s current laws (total disarmament) as the national template.

However, due to the state of our firearm laws, when it comes to facing a machete attack Australians are currently on their own. Calling the police may not even get you a response due to staff shortages. Even if they do turn up, it’s always too late and they may not catch the offender. Even if they do catch the offender, he’s out on bail because of an incredibly weak and corrupt justice system.

And if you do fight back, you may end up like Ben Batterham and dragged through the courts for years. Police aren’t immune to this either, just ask Zac Rolfe.

See, we voted for Trump only due to his bringing up and worked for us on our Immigration Invasion. Who do you got down under? Why don’t you spend some time trying to save your own land rather than spending it all here browbeating Americans who ARE doing something?

You brought up Ron Paul Libertarianism. That’s all fine, but Ron Paul didn’t listen to me that day. Therefore, he didn’t get elected in ’12. Now what?!

Nobody with anything worth stealing has ever been able to “….live peacefully with Whites.” Rich is lost in “Americandreamland”….speaking of the “fiction” that is “the TV version” anything and everything.

Meanwhile, the world-wasting “civilization” disease deep in its own terminal throes is busily cannibalizing the cannibals that up to now have been doing the damned thing’s dirty work. Anyhow, we are still here, and will be long after the last of the invasive species called “American” has disappeared back into the darkness from which they came.

I am sure that Mr. Corey Comperatore,who had been standing behind Trump, died that moment of a choreographed heart attack.

That is a meaningless remark. ie: standing ‘behind Chump’. Sure, viewed from ONE angle, Comperatore is behind Chump. Viewed from another angle he is parallel to Chump (and the distance between Chump and Comperatore was some dozens of metres – so don’t make it sound like he was literally standing over Chump’s shoulder).

I posted a video in the other thread (and I was nice enough to specify the few minutes only that you had to watch – because I know you have the attention span of a child).
And that CLEARLY demonstrated that there were other shooters that day in BUTLER PA, who had a clear line of fire to the MAGAts in the crowd (hence able to shoot Comperatore), but were OBSTRUCTED from shooting Donald Chump.

So, nice guy that I am, I will post that video once more.
In addition, I will NARROW DOWN the part you have to watch to the ONE EFF’N MINUTE from 45:20-46:40, where you will see why those other snipers, that COULD shoot at the MAGAts in the crowd, were prevented from shooting at the fat Orange Baboon (and for your enlightenment, Comperatore’s position relative to the Orang-U-tan is clearly marked):

Video Link

In other words, said snipers would not have been able to shoot the evil Orange clown even if they wanted to. But Achmed, as always, you were TOO LAZY to look at the info.

What can I say. Your head is full of claptrap – by way of nonsense conveyed to you directly from the RNC and Miriam Adelson’s handlers. You refuse to look at anything that will taint the reputation of your messiah.
That smacks of cultism. You have TFS (Trump Fellater Syndrome), and you have it bad.

As for your comment in # 70, our ex-P.M Howard is a traitor.
He was as thick as thieves with the ZOG controlled U.S Gubmint during his tenure in office and should be prosecuted accordingly for Australia’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires.

As for Gun Control in Australia, like most Americans, you have no eff’n idea what goes on here.
I’ll summarise it in simple terms:
In Australia, if you don’t have a criminal record and you want a gun, you can get one.
There are millions of guns (overwhelmingly rifles), in private hands. Handguns are harder to get, but if you’re a member of a gun club you can get one too.

Assault rifles (eg: Ar-15) are illegal to own – unless you have an Occupational* reason for owning one.
(*eg: from time to time the state and Federal Gubmints acknowledge that there’s a plague of roos, emus, camels** etc. And professional shooters are hired for these mass culls).
(**Australia has more camels than the rest of the world combined, and from time to time their numbers explode and they overgraze those ares they inhabit, causing erosion/environmental damage – hence the need for the mass culls).

Here’s a 1 min video showing how they’re shot from a helicopter:

Video Link

Nope. I feel no need to try to go along with some complicated theory of why ZOG would want to only act like they were going to assassinate Donald Trump, when the motivations don’t make sense, much less the complicated BS. So you shoot one guy dead to make the fake assassination more realistic, is that it? T.V., you’re going down a rabbit hole that would have made Alice’s look like a granite quarry.

Why do a fake assassination attempt? Oh, so Trump gets more sympathy, hence more votes? If you’re powerful enough to run this complex scam, why not just support fair voting? Why not help him win, if he’s your cntr-op. (That’s what they’d call it, because they are super-smart guys like those ones chasing Jason Bourne!) That’d have gotten Trump plenty more votes to make it less close.

Then, one may think, if one is not completely autistic, hey, why did ZOG want this guy that keeps riling people up about the Invasion and the Deep State to win to begin with? Wouldn’t it have been better to let the Kameltoe win? She’s a drugged-out, alcoholic ditz and can’t even think straight, much less run anything, which is pretty much what you want in a President if you’re the Globalist Deep State.

The theory makes NO SENSE whatsoever based on motives. Without a motive, I don’t feel the need to look into your web of complicated speculation.

I know you don’t like the guy, but here’s a piece of insight that Steve Sailer wrote that I agree with: Don’t believe conspiracy theories that work under the assumption that the conspirators are really, really smart. They are NOT the sharp-as-tacks, information-at-their-fingertips non-D.I.E. high-IQ White men that you see in the Jason Bourne movies.

All that written, I see a blog post coming on this. I hope to have not wasted my time completely in trying to explain things to you.

Well, that article does not sound so cheerful about your prospects there in Australia. Politically, from what I read (only, granted), it sounds way too much like the UK. The people there are nothing but subjects of the destructive ruling class at this point.

Since the article I linked you to mentioned the evils of mass immigration of strange, often-violent foreigners there, perhaps you could see to address my point about Trump being elected due to his having brought up this issue when nobody else would. (Yes, even Ron Paul!) It is still nearly the only problem I care that he does something about. Whether mass deportations will really happen is a big question, but compared to the alternatives… DownUnder, you got nothin’.

Then, this post was about tariffs, wasn’t it? Peak Stupidity commenters steered me to info on the Great Depression and Smoot-Hawley, which I need to get into. Good evening to you.

Except we see successful people of every race in the US who are able to act White, obey our laws, dress like us and work hard. It’s only when you people are unable to behave like civilized Europeans that you become bitter and sad. I understand, when you look at the mud huts, grass skirts and short life spans you lived before Whitey lifted you up, then see our cathedrals, elegant clothing, advanced science, it can be disheartening to the weak minded. But if you hate Whitey so much, why are you still hanging around? There are plenty of 3rd world crapholes you can move to. Move to an Indian reservation, though they probably won’t welcome you unless share their tribal affiliation.

Good morning, Vigilante. A guy named Alfred Eckes, a former member of the International Trade Commission under President Reagan, wrote a book in 1995 called Opening America’s Market* about free trade vs tariffs.

His chapter 4, starting on page 100 of the book (p. 124 of the .pdf) is all about Smoot-Hawley. Mr. Eckes knows his stuff – this is empirical with numerical results rather than ideological theory – and he explains why 6 big supposedly terrible effects of these tariffs are old wives tales. How old are you? Do you have a husband?

Check it out. I’ve read most of the chapter and parts of the rest of that book. It might enlighten you. Then again, I don’t watch your videos (except for the one I’d already seen), so why should you read? To get smarter, maybe?

Also, see Protectionism Didn’t Cause the Great Depression by Ian Fletcher.

.

* This links to the whole book as a .pdf, thanks to PS commenter Adam Smith!

I’ve read a ton of economics literature, and I’ve never heard of this Alfred Eckes bloke, nor Ian Fletcher.
Needless to say. they are almost certainly ZOG funded/affiliated non entities that are covering for Socialism/Big Gubmint/Jewish exploitation of the citizenry.

Let me use another analogy. As all of us know (those of us that have done even a modicum of research on the matter of the Holohoax), there is NO PROOF that a single gas chamber for killing humans existed in ANY of the German work camps during WWII (which were falsely described as ‘Extermination Centres’ by mendacious Jews).
Moreover, there was no Systematic Extermination of ANY minority (be that Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Soviet POW’s or whatever), by the Germans during WWII.
You’re quite a learned fellow Achmed, so you agree with that, don’t you?

That said, I would wager that 98% or more of the literature on the Holohoax is ZOG funded B.S with claims by moral-compass-devoid Jews saying that they personally witnessed in the ‘death camps’:

1) Jews being steamed to death like lobsters
2) Jews being murdered with Pedal Powered Skull-crushing machines.

I kid you not. They swore under oath that this was so.
SIMILARLY, the Jews loved the traitor FDR and his New Deal. The yids loved Socialism and the expansion of Authoritarian Big Bloated Gubmint.
And, although Smoot-Hawley originated under Hoover, FDR kept it and in fact doubled down on it.

So OBVIOUSLY there will be a ton of books out there ranting on about how good these measures were (in fact the vast majority), that hand out accolades to Smoot Hawley and FDR’s disastrous policies.
Are you THAT STUPID to not be aware of this?

Now, I gave you links to articles written by the great Prof. Emeritus Tom DiLorenzo (an accomplished and internationally renowned academic), that summarise how disastrous tariffs are.
This is ALL you need to know about tariffs. DiLorenzo is a long time personal friend of Dr Ron Paul. The latter endorses all the stuff he’s written. ie: bestsellers like this:

The Real Lincoln
A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War

That book dispels the myth that Lincoln was one of America’s best Presidents. He was in fact among the worst*.
(*Had FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson never come along, Lincoln would surely be the worst POTUS of all).
Seriously Achmed, your knowledge of economics is quite poor. How can you not know many of the things I’ve said above?

Lastly, in relation to the question you asked me (Do you have a husband?), I’m well aware of statistics like these below in your country – a first prize ranking which I believe the U.S is the only nation in the world that holds.
(The article in the link is headlined ‘More men are raped in the US than women’):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html

So I guess there is a much higher statistical likelihood in America that you could approach a bloke on the street, ask that question, and get an affirmative response.
Not so here in Australia. I, like the vast majority of men here, are straight.
I am long time married with progeny – and I’m a boomer.

You’re obviously a young bloke yourself, judging from the lack-of-life-experience commentary of yours. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. We were all young and foolish at one point.
Just keep reading those Austrian Economics books available at Mises.org (the Mises Institute) and you’ll be off to the races in no time.

And, you had better burn those books trying to make a case for tariffs.
You can bet London to a brick that they’re Jewish funded claptrap.
No need to thank me for the heads up – you’re welcome.
Have a pleasant evening.

Testing something here. I’ll get back to ya’.

I’ve read a ton of economics literature, and I’ve never heard of this Alfred Eckes bloke, nor Ian Fletcher.
Needless to say. they are almost certainly ZOG funded/affiliated non entities that are covering for Socialism/Big Gubmint/Jewish exploitation of the citizenry.

Yes, you’ve never head of him, but he wrote a whole book on tariffs, which is what Dr. Paul here’s post is about. Everyone you disagree with is a member of ZOG. Got it.

This guy’s got lots of numbers – the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were not the largest seen, with larger ones recently prior. Then, it turns out that along with lots of decrease in trade due to the Depression, non-dutiable goods had the same decrease or barely lower than the decrease in trade of dutiable goods. The whole chapter is pretty interesting. The whole book is – I note as I wrote in the 1st comment on here, which sent you into a panty-twisting rage, tariffs had been levied on goods coming into the US since the beginning. I may send you a screenshot later on of a table of tariffs starting in 1828, as I can’t seem to copy the .pdf text.

This is tough, because I’m not sure you are able to read books. I know you like your videos… of stuff like ZOG staging a fake attempted assassination of their latest controlled opposition because … reasons…

Had FDR, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson never come along, Lincoln would surely be the worst POTUS of all

Agreed, although Dark Brandon with his deliberate importation of 12 million additional foreigners might be in there somewhere.

I think prison rape is a big evil and one that has not been nearly talked about enough by politicians. It’s mostly a Black! thang… there’s no gaiety involved…. don’t know how it works with you and your Abos down there.

Have a pleasant evening.

Wrong time zone, but thanks.

ok boomer.

err, globalist.

Free Trade, by economic definition, is preferable, “muh consumer prices.”
So I guess, instead of “politically” preferable, I should say it’s “nationally preferable” to at least protect vital industries like steel, energy, and heavy manufacturing. Autarky, even in the Russian case, is not happening – China will deal with anyone on good terms.

“No Tariffs” are supposed to be one of the settled questions in “mainstream” economics – at least superficially. Tariffs are still widespread, especially “non-tariff barriers.” But it is all horse trading, IMO, to keep government spending high and out of control.

Yes, you’ve never head of him, but he wrote a whole book on tariffs, which is what Dr. Paul here’s post is about.

That’s like saying: ‘I want to know the facts of the Holohoax, so I’ll read a book on it by Elie [the weasel] Wiesel’.
But this man is known LIAR. So why would I want to read a single word he wrote on the subject?

The whole point of reading a book on matters of substance is to learn the truth – unless it’s fiction that you seek.
So we need to seek the counsel of known truth tellers, like Economic Prof. Emeritus Tom DiLorenzo – or any of the others qualified to speak about the issue which can be found at Mises.org.

So, I’ll ask you this question: ‘Did you read what Tom DiLorenzo wrote in that link to the first [brief] article I sent your way (the second article is good too, but the first one is the better one)?
Here it is again for your edification:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/11/thomas-dilorenzo/our-history-of-protectionist-tariff-train-wrecks/
If so, what aspects of what he had to say do you disagree with (and be sure to furnish the real world evidence that you allege disproves it)?

Now, I suspect that you have not read it – because you’ve demonstrated that you’re quite lazy.
And if that’s the case, it will prove you don’t have the courtesy to spend a FEW MINUTES reading a short article I’ve suggested, yet expect me to waste dozens of hours reading the economic claptrap from NON-ENTITIES and know-nothings?

Achmed, you live in an Orwellian world. In your world the student (ie: YOU) is suggesting the equivalent of the professor (ie: ME) spend many hours of their valuable time reading something, while not being willing to spend even 1 minute on what the professor suggests.
Now, I’m not a professor of economics. But, RELATIVE TO YOU, I’m a Nobel Laureate in that field – so great is the discrepancy between your understanding of this discipline and mine.

What I know is courtesy of the very best people versed in the Austrian School of Economic thinking. The people you reference are Keynesians/Socialists and ne’er-do’well’s.
Keynesianism is known to be a failed doctrine. Only fools believe in it. It has never worked.
It failed for FDR, it failed for Obama in the post GFC period (it inflated an even bigger bubble that will ultimately result in a much worse crisis than the 2008 GFC).

And, as bad as Obama was, what Donald Chump did in the year 2020 alone (and appears to be doing right now), absolutely dwarfs the reckless spending/stimulus/budget deficits of he Obama years.

There has been NO WORSE PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC THAN DONALD J CHUMP, as far as fiscal and monetary profligacy is concerned.
That is an irrefutable fact.

You also write:

Everyone you disagree with is a member of ZOG. Got it.

What a ridiculous thing to say.
A lot of people who are known to have integrity, furnish information that I’m unaware of or that conflicts with my take on that subject. And after I’m enlightened, and make the appropriate amendments to my original hypothesis, I’m thankful to that individual for correcting me.

Someone is not automatically a ‘member’ of ZOG because they disagree with me.
BUT, if someone posts obviously ZOG related talking points and economic illiteracy, they are very likely to be funded by ZOG to post that nonsense. OR they’re just useful idiots/ignorant Socialists whose opinions should be immediately discarded.

Meanwhile, what is it that you don’t understand about the following statement?:
‘The people whose names you furnished are NON-ENTITIES that no one has ever heard of (at least no one reputable)’.
The fact is there are only so many hours in the day, and the number of economics books in the world may total hundreds of thousands of hours of reading. Obviously I’d need to live scores of lifetimes to trawl through all of them.
So, unlike you who just laps up everything your ‘betters’ at the RNC and Miriam Adelson’s team tell you (and lap it up as gospel without critical analysis), I’m very selective in what I read

Now, if someone of the calibre of Dr Ron Paul, Tom Woods Phd, Lew Rockwell (or any of the great contributors at LewRockwell.com), or world famous economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe recommended said book, then I’d look into it.
But NONE of them are recommending those books/authors you suggest because they’re obviously garbage.

Meanwhile, on the matter of the Holohoax, I asked you a question (which will help me determine if you’re well read in historical matters – as you claim to be), OR if you’re a brainwashed automaton that has swallowed the indoctrination you got from the ZOG owned MSM and ZOG controlled public education system in your country.

So, what’s the answer? Do you agree that the official Holohoax narrative is just fiction conjured up by mendacious Jews, and that although some Jews died (from natural causes, from food shortages/malnutrition that were beyond the control of the Germans, or from the pogroms of the local residents in Ukraine and the Baltic states), said Jewish deaths were of the order of a few hundred thousand and thus nowhere near the preposterous 6 million figure being bandied about by Malignant International Jewry.

Lastly, you can click on the link below and read the article titled ‘Trump Is Bombing Yemen For Israel’ by fellow Aussie Caitlin Johnstone:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/03/no_author/trump-is-bombing-yemen-for-israel/

There’s no need to even read the article – because the titled encapsulates it all.
The noble Yemenis, a plucky bunch of heroes standing up to the Anglo-Zionist empire (Yemen simultaneously being the poorest nation in the Middle East), is being bombed by the Evil Orange Clown at the behest of the Zionist misfits.

WHAT THE EFF IS WRONG WITH YOU ACHMED?
How can you support the Orange Baboon in light of that and all the other depraved things Donald Chump has done on behalf of the Talmudic criminals (like ongoing support and a never ending procession of 2000 pound bombs being sent to Apartheid Israel to completely genocide the Palestinians)?
Don’t you have any semblance of a moral compass at all?
Or are you so indoctrinated in the Cult of Chump that you’re unable to see the forest for the trees?

“That book dispels the myth that Lincoln was one of America’s best presidents.”

Ivan Eland wrote a book, Recarving Rushmore, that included a ranking of the presidents by how libertarian they were. Lincoln was quite far down on the list at a very low number 29. The worst president was Wilson, followed by Truman, McKinley, Polk, Bush Jr. , JFK and Reagan.

The most libertarian presidents were all 18th or 19th century presidents: Tyler, Cleveland, Van Buren, Hayes and Washington. This is followed by the 20th century presidents Harding, Carter, Eisenhower and Coolidge.

I mostly agree with this except I would not rank Reagan as one of our worst seven presidents. Eland’s book came out in 2009. Both Obama and Biden would have to be among our ten worst presidents now. From a libertarian standpoint, Trump was not very good in his first term. He never cut government spending. It is too bad we never had Ron Paul as president.

I’ve read ALL those guys. If you’d read my comments, I wouldn’t have to keep arguing with your autistic stupidity! I’ll just link back to some of those.

From (OMG!) 10 days ago, here, my initial comment:

The Founders of America were very OK and onboard with tariffs on foreign goods. In fact, tariffs and excise taxes were THE sources of funding for the Federal (then, non-Feral) Government for our 1st century and then some.

Nowadays, America is not self-sufficient. To be, from here:

For one thing, the tariffs are being used as threats against Canada and Mexico to put pressure on them to close their borders. Granted, the onus is really on the invaded country, but one must admit that Trump-47 is doing a bang-up job on that… for now, anyway. Perhaps other threats would suffice, but if this works, more power to Trump for his successful tactics.

Then, let’s talk fairness. Does anyone here know what kind of tariff levies are placed upon US goods entering Canada? From what I read above, I don’t think even Ron Paul does. Look up some of the numbers. OUR tariffs can be considered retaliatory against most countries, because we get shafted by most, our having sat on our laurels for so long after being the manufacturer for the Free World for many years.

Now, regarding China, even 50% should be considered pretty damn fair after our having a one-sided trade deal with them (look up “Favored Nation Status”) for 3 decades running. Trump DOES know how badly we’ve been getting screwed by the Chinese (leaving IP theft aside here), and I’m glad for that.

None of the writers that discuss the economic ideology of tariffs have brought up the actual conditions, with America having been getting screwed in trade with import tariffs from lots of countries. What would you do, “Vigilante”, invade? No, just as with visa issues, it’s tit-for-tat. They’ll lower their tariffs if we finally take these unfair deals and raise ours accordingly.

A lot of people who are known to have integrity, furnish information that I’m unaware of or that conflicts with my take on that subject. And after I’m enlightened, and make the appropriate amendments to my original hypothesis, I’m thankful to that individual for correcting me.

Why don’t you go correct your ridiculous speculation here, half of which are bogus? I corrected you on some, but you won’t want to get into actual details on ANYTHING. You’d rather stay in your Mom’s basement watching youtube videos.

I’m not arguing with you in regards to lots of your criticisms of Trump. I have some of the same. However, you are lying when you say he’s trying to raise the budget expenses (one of your MOST stupid of claims in your list of stupid claims). I brought up DOGE here already. More news: Trump To Sign Order Eliminating Department Of Education. Yes, I know, Reagan couldn’t do it, and Trump probably can’t either – should be up to Congress. However, you are lying when you make these claims that Trump is trying to increase expenditures.

Then, in this comment, along with plenty others, I discussed the enthusiasm I have for Trump – at least the stopping of digging when it comes to the demographic hole from the immigration invasion. You don’t even address this, which makes the rest of your points about Trump moot for me:

However, this purposeful ruination ramped up with the Black! Light-giver Øb☭ma, but went into much higher gear with Dark Brandon. The purposeful invitation of invasion, a Mariel Boatlift x 100 (see We are all Miamians now) of 12 million foreigners, made it very obvious to all that the idea is to destroy America.

The reason the Establishment has been so anti-Trump since he talked about the immigration invasion 10 years ago (- ~3 months) is that he is NOT in the UniParty. Flaws and all, and there are many, he is doing whatever he’s doing on behalf of Americans.

Greetings from “an Indian Reservation.” Nobody here in Indian Country is either bitter or sad about not being “civilized.” Nobody squanders their precious attention on hating “Whitey,” either….or envies our domesticated European Relatives for their follies and fashions.

As for their “advanced science”….Oppenheimer had it right with his “I am become Death.!” comment following the A-bomb test. It must be a little hard for the “civilized” to acknowledge the plain fact that their idolized project is hardly an eye-blink in the eons-long existence of The Free Wild Natural LivingLoving Arrangement of Earth and Sky….especially here at The End of Days with the wannabe “infinite and eternal” “self”-deluded “Western” outbreak of the world-wasting disease deep in its own terminal throes.

The cathedrals are burning….along with the cities. The riches and the raiment are turning to rags.

But The Grass is still growing. Water and earth and sunshine will still make adobe. Our Condition is in wonderful condition.

What I know is courtesy of the very best people versed in the Austrian School of Economic thinking. The people you reference are Keynesians/Socialists and ne’er-do’well’s.
Keynesianism is known to be a failed doctrine. Only fools believe in it. It has never worked.
It failed for FDR, it failed for Obama in the post GFC period (it inflated an even bigger bubble that will ultimately result in a much worse crisis than the 2008 GFC).

So, are you saying the Founders of this country were Keynesians? Tariffs are not Keynesian policy.

Now, I’m not a professor of economics.

You wouldn’t be worse than most of them.

But, RELATIVE TO YOU, I’m a Nobel Laureate in that field – so great is the discrepancy between your understanding of this discipline and mine.

Relative to me, you’re still nothing but an autistic fool writing from your Mom’s basement. Meanwhile, I see what’s going on in the REAL world, the US in particular, right now! It’s time for tariffs, for reciprocity, for balance against unfair extra-legal trade practices of the Chinese, as threats to stop the immigration invasion, and, more generally, to enable American manufacturing to (slowly) get back on its feet.

I wrote my first comment here at the top with no animosity against anyone here, or Ron Paul for that matter. On tariffs, I happen to disagree with Ron Paul*. You can run your mouth here till the cows come home, but that’s what America needs, and some fool in Australia will not change my mind. You’re not the ruler of the Ron Paul threads, so fuck off!

I must be ZOG. Sure, that’s what it is.

.

* The other thing is the use of eVerify. 112 years after the Income Tax, I think the privacy worries about it have been water under the bridge for a LONG time., Unfortunately, the Feral Gov’t DOES know where we work and a whole lot more, via the IRS.

Were it a choice between Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul for President in, say, 2000, it would be a very tough call for me. Here’s what the great Conservative Pat Buchanan had to say – kindly archived right here on this very site by free-speech wunderkind Ron Unz:

As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington Post: “Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs.”

The story began: “National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President Trump’s repeated inaccurate claim that the Chinese foot the bill.”

A free trade evangelical, Kudlow had conceded on Fox News that consumers pay the tariffs on products made abroad that they purchase here in the U.S. Yet that is by no means the whole story.

A tariff may be described as a sales or consumption tax the consumer pays, but tariffs are also a discretionary and an optional tax.

If you choose not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you do not pay the tariff.

China loses the sale. This is why Beijing, which runs $350 billion to $400 billion in annual trade surpluses at our expense is howling loudest. Should Donald Trump impose that 25% tariff on all $500 billion in Chinese exports to the USA, it would cripple China’s economy. Factories seeking assured access to the U.S. market would flee in panic from the Middle Kingdom.

Tariffs were the taxes that made America great. They were the taxes relied upon by the first and greatest of our early statesmen, before the coming of the globalists Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

Tariffs, to protect manufacturers and jobs, were the Republican Party’s path to power and prosperity in the 19th and 20th centuries, before the rise of the Rockefeller Eastern liberal establishment and its embrace of the British-bred heresy of unfettered free trade.

The Tariff Act of 1789 was enacted with the declared purpose, “the encouragement and protection of manufactures.” It was the second act passed by the first Congress led by Speaker James Madison. It was crafted by Alexander Hamilton and signed by President Washington.

After the War of 1812, President Madison, backed by Henry Clay and John Calhoun and ex-Presidents Jefferson and Adams, enacted the Tariff of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition, so Americans would build the new factories and capture the booming U.S. market. It worked.

Tariffs financed Mr. Lincoln’s War. The Tariff of 1890 bears the name of Ohio Congressman and future President William McKinley, who said that a foreign manufacturer “has no right or claim to equality with our own. … He pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties.”

That is economic patriotism, putting America and Americans first.

The Fordney-McCumber Tariff gave Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge the revenue to offset the slashing of Wilson’s income taxes, igniting that most dynamic of decades — the Roaring ’20s.

That the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Depression of the 1930s is a New Deal myth in which America’s schoolchildren have been indoctrinated for decades.

The Depression began with the crash of the stock market in 1929, nine months before Smoot-Hawley became law. The real villain: The Federal Reserve, which failed to replenish that third of the money supply that had been wiped out by thousands of bank failures.

Milton Friedman taught us that.

A tariff is a tax, but its purpose is not just to raise revenue but to make a nation economically independent of others, and to bring its citizens to rely upon each other rather than foreign entities.

The principle involved in a tariff is the same as that used by U.S. colleges and universities that charge foreign students higher tuition than their American counterparts.

What patriot would consign the economic independence of his country to the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith in a system crafted by intellectuals whose allegiance is to an ideology, not a people?

What great nation did free traders ever build?

Free trade is the policy of fading and failing powers, past their prime. In the half-century following passage of the Corn Laws, the British showed the folly of free trade.

They began the second half of the 19th century with an economy twice that of the USA and ended it with an economy half of ours, and equaled by a Germany, which had, under Bismarck, adopted what was known as the American System.

Of the nations that have risen to economic preeminence in recent centuries — the British before 1850, the United States between 1789 and 1914, post-war Japan, China in recent decades — how many did so through free trade? None. All practiced economic nationalism.

The problem for President Trump?

Once a nation is hooked on the cheap goods that are the narcotic free trade provides, it is rarely able to break free. The loss of its economic independence is followed by the loss of its political independence, the loss of its greatness and, ultimately, the loss of its national identity.

Brexit was the strangled cry of a British people that had lost its independence and desperately wanted it back.

Thank you so much, blogger E.H. Hail for pointing this out on the Peak Stupidity blog!

You’re not the ruler of the Ron Paul threads, so fuck off!
I must be ZOG. Sure, that’s what it is.

Oh dear, it seems I’ve really gotten under your skin Achmed.
And, it’s TWICE now that you’ve ducked and weaved rather than responding to my questions on the Holohoax.

I gather then that you believe* in the official ZOG dictated narrative of the Holohoax, of the fabled ‘6 million’ that perished in those gas chambers for killing humans (for which there is NO PROOF that any existed).
Post war tallies of the world Jewish population demonstrate that there were MORE JEWS alive in the late 1940’s than there were a decade prior.
This is indicative of the fact that you haven’t studied WWII in any depth.

(*Either that or you want to ingratiate yourself with the Jews in your inner circle or that frequent your website perhaps?). That’s why you’re too gutless to call a spade a spade.
You also write:

Meanwhile, I see what’s going on in the REAL world, the US in particular, right now! It’s time for tariffs, for reciprocity, for balance against unfair extra-legal trade

There is no question that trade between the U.S and China (indeed between the U.S and every other nation) is unfair.
The whole world toils to produce goods that America buys with freshly printed greenbacks (or digitally conjured trillions), and thus AMERICA IS RIPPING OFF THE WORLD.
It can do this because it has the exorbitant privilege of having the world reserve currency.
And whilst that remains the case the nations of the world accept them in exchange for goods.

But THIS SITUATION WILL NOT REMAIN FOR LONG.
The U.S has abused this privilege by conjuring countless scores of trillions of USD in excess of its real productive capacity, and the nations of the world are pushing back by trading between themselves in their own currencies.

Soon enough they’ll demand tangible commodities and/or gold in exchange for their goods.
And, when the U.S is unable to provide said items, the jig will be up and the USD will sink into the abyss (and with it the U.S economy/stock/& bond markets).
The truth is that you are clueless about the real world, because REAL WORLD OUTCOMES support everything I’ve said in spades – and contradict what you’re saying.
Achmed, you’re living in a fantasy land divorced from reality.
You also write:

So, are you saying the Founders of this country were Keynesians? Tariffs are not Keynesian policy.

Keynesianism is about deficit spending, it’s about providing ‘stimulus’ when there is an economic downturn.
But the reality is that this ‘stimulus’ does not stimulate. It provides a short time sugar high but ends up SEDATING the economy and delivering economic malaise (as FDR proved from the New Deal).
Warren Harding knew what to do in the ‘Depression’ of 1921. He CUT GUBMINT SPENDING and thus eased the burden on the private sector to support this parasitic monolith.
Thereafter market forces quickly corrected the imbalances and the nation was firing on all cylinders in no time.

So, even though tariffs are not a core plank of Keynesianism, it is a policy prescription that is overwhelmingly applied and FREQUENTLY ADVOCATED by Keynesians (as Hoover and FDR most assuredly were).
So, in relation to the Founding Fathers, they were overwhelmingly Libertarian – but obviously not so in relation to tariffs.
But, in their defence, I can see why they did what they did in the context of the TECHNOLOGY that existed 250 years ago.

Think about it. Thee were no electronic machines (or anything to link a credit/debit card transaction to a bank account that the IRS could monitor), around at that time that could add say a 5% sales tax on all transactions at EVERY merchant across the country or a small income tax (in a way that record keeping couldn’t be fudged and monitored for integrity by the Gubmint).
It would’ve been a LOGISTICAL IMPOSSIBILITY to have Gubmint tax collectors everywhere supervising over all transactions conducted by every eff’n merchant across the land.

BUT, by having tax collectors situated solely at the ports, they could monitor the goods coming off the ships from abroad and levy a tax on the spot while utlising a MINIMUM of tax collecting personnel.
Simply put, in the early days of the republic there was NO OTHER FEASIBLE OPTION available to them for funding Gubmint at that time.
You go on to say:

Why don’t you go correct your ridiculous speculation here, half of which are bogus?
I corrected you on some, but you won’t want to get into actual details on ANYTHING.

I can honestly say (hand on heart), that you’ve been incapable of correcting/refuting a single thing I’ve written. Sure, you make all manner of claims to this and that, but REAL WORLD OUTCOMES contradict all that you say.
UR readers can see that I RESPOND IN GREAT DETAIL to your spurious assertions, which is PROOF that I actually read what you wrote.

However, when I ask you to point out which statements made by Prof. Emeritus Tom DiLorenzo about tariffs are incorrect (and furnish the evidence to suggest that), you have EFF’N NOTHING.
This is yet further proof that you DON’T READ ANYTHING that others have been gracious enough to locate for you.

You’re sad sack Achmed. I don’t like being around yes-men and women (although I’ll make an exception in the case of the latter if they’re smokin’ hot).
I find that I learn more from people who disagree with me, that challenge me.
Not people who disagree for the sake of disagreeing. I mean people that offer CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, people who I’ve observed approach the argument in good faith, who don’t have partisan political allegiances to the GOP/DEMS or anyone else (like you do).

Achmed, you do not challenge me in the slightest. I’ve easily been able to swat down your juvenile arguments without breaking a sweat.
You’re really going to have to try much harder next time, because you’ve disappointed so far.

I don’t care what political party rules, if they’e effing up the world – I will go into attack dog mode and criticies the hell out of them.
Whether it be Brandon or Donald Chump, it’s much of a muchness – seeing as BOTH OF THEM ARE BEHOLDEN TO THE ZOG ELDERS.
Both read from a ZOG dictated script. If you can’t see this then there’s no hope for you.

Well I’m glad to hear you aren’t bitter, or sad. You sound like you are in your comments. And jealous. You sound jealous of the White man’s achievements. I know several people who tell me they have some Indian blood and they appear well adjusted and doing fine. A relative went to college with one of those angry Injuns who never stopped crying about the terrible Great White Father. The cult of victimhood in the modern world is large, I’m disgusted by it. And I never blame the sins of the fathers on the sons. The cult of the victim always does.

Think about it. Thee were no electronic machines (or anything to link a credit/debit card transaction to a bank account that the IRS could monitor), around at that time that could add say a 5% sales tax on all transactions at EVERY merchant across the country or a small income tax (in a way that record keeping couldn’t be fudged and monitored for integrity by the Gubmint).
It would’ve been a LOGISTICAL IMPOSSIBILITY to have Gubmint tax collectors everywhere supervising over all transactions conducted by every eff’n merchant across the land.

[non-sarcastic] LOL! Dude, you’re making it up as you go along!

Video Link
There were taxes on whiskey, if you recall, that almost resulted in a quick AmRev 2.0. Tax tamps were involved, as they were at the time the colonists through cases of tea into Boston Harbor. Besides tariffs, the other income source for the Fed Gov for over a century was excise taxes:

An excise, or excise tax, is any duty on manufactured goods that is normally levied at the moment of manufacture for internal consumption rather than at sale. It is therefore a fee that must be paid in order to consume certain products.

Ooops, that’s wikipedia, so don’t trust that definition – it’s probably ZOG inspired. Oh, no, but no electronics! How could anybody tax anybody before electronics?! You’re getting silly. I do remember that slogan shouted during the revolution: “No taxation without digital electronics!”

From this 15 page paper – I suppose too long for Mr. Vigilante to be able to get though – U.S. Federal Government Revenues: 1790 to the Present. – we see the following ZOG-inspired table:

(Customs duties are tariffs.)

I have that small table imbedded in the Peak Stupidity post Ron Paul is wrong about something. from just under a year back about… you guessed it!

You know, right, that the odious Amendment XVI was ratified in 1913? That was even before the ENIAC, much less the Tandy Trash-80 personal computer! How’d they do it? I know I wouldn’t have paid, cause… no computers. No, the reason the Founders didn’t have a Federal Income, sales, or poll tax (the latter being a tax on BEING ALIVE) is because they HATED those things. You, of all people, ought to understand that. Instead, you start making stuff up as you go along just to try to make a point.

I RESPOND IN GREAT DETAIL to your spurious assertions, which is PROOF that I actually read what you wrote.

You respond with arm-waving and links to videos along with links to good Libertarians who I’ve already read plenty of but who don’t address the CURRENT situation in the least.

I don’t write about the Holocaust because I don’t know enough about the details (such as Mr. Unz writes about) to be able to discuss it well. That’s the same with 9/11 for me and the JFK assassination. If I don’t know enough about it, I won’t pretend to be an expert on it. You may want to give a thought to that.

Here you are telling Americans that they should not even TRY to reverse their course. I personally am sure we are in a deep financial hole, out of which we will not crawl without facing some serious financial pain and turmoil. No matter what else you think of him, Trump wants the DOGE guys to cut. No, Trump doesn’t know numbers, and any tariffs, the max you could think of, could not wipe out $2 Trillion annual deficits, and then, as I wrote, there are the 3rd rails of SS, Medicair/aid, etc. What they are doing is a small step. However, it is “enlightening”, if I may, the people on how their money is not only greatly wasted, but used against them viciously.

It’s not gonna be fun. Communists will try to take advantage of financial/political turmoil to say “See? Capitalism sucks! We’ve got a better way, Comrades!”, as they’ve always done, for over a century. America is now that low-hanging fruit for them. They may very well succeed. However, rather than bury our heads in the sand with our asses in the air as you would have us and seem to be doing yourself, we will “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It will go slowly, as 30 years of damage is hard to reverse, but bringing manufacturing back to the US is a step in the right direction.

Did you read the ’19 Pat Buchanan column I pasted in? What would be your rebuttal to that?

Unfortunately, the Feral Gov’t DOES know where we work and a whole lot more, via the IRS.

Lol… Not all of us.

While they do make it difficult for most people (gaining voluntary compliance mostly by indoctrination in “government” schools and by instilling fear in the hearts of the taxcattle with the ever present threat of violence) there are ways to maintain your privacy when dealing (or in many cases not dealing) with the criminal scumbags who masquerade as “government”.

Cheers! ☮

Good afternoon, Adam!

Lots of time today, but I really do have CONstructive things to do!

My friend starts telling me what I should do – I can deduct this stuff, etc., etc.

“Listen, you’ve never done taxes in your life. Can I explain this standard deduction thing to you again? What would you know about it?” and more power to him!

After events in the 1990s that taught me just that, don’t let one part of any gov’t/ big business know anything that they don’t need to know, I kept the info sent to a minimum, no phone #’s, emails, etc. I think I told you how the census went, last 2 times – “We have 3 people and one cat. I didn’t even have to tell you about the cat, per US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, paragraph 3, so, you’re welcome.”

I’m glad you and others have stayed out of the whole shebang. Nice going.

Regarding the Holocaust, Tooth is partly right. (Oh, that was painful)
Tooth is wrong in that the Nazis copiously documented the extermination of Jews and other ‘undesirables’. That sounds like ‘proof’ to me.

What Tooth is right about is the documentation is flawed. Bribes were paid and those bribed documented ‘undesirables’ as having been exterminated, when they were not.

Check out Irena Sendler for just a sample.

Oh, no, but no electronics! How could anybody tax anybody before electronics?! You’re getting silly.

Achmed, it is you that is being silly here.
I said specifically that, should the Founding Fathers have decided to levy a 5% Sales tax (for example) to fund what limited Gubmint they had, that would’ve been logistically impossible to put into practice.
Because it would’ve entailed that a tax collector would need to be assigned in the premises of every merchant across the nation.

BUT, in the modern age, seeing as most transactions are conducted using a debit or credit card, the IRS can easily track down the bulk of trades conducted by a particular merchant through perusal of their bank statements, and thus tax evasion is much harder to avoid.

Yes, I’m aware of the taxes on whiskey (hence the reason for the Whiskey Rebellion in the early 1790’s). Most people look at George Washington as a god-like figure that could do no wrong, and that was loved by Americans in every era. But the reality is that those taxes he levied on whiskey generated much discontent amongst the populace and Washington was greatly disliked for his heavy handedness in putting down the rebellion.

Summary: As your Table 1 (Proportion of Federal Tax revenues) shows, in the early days of the republic the overwhelming bulk of revenue came from Customs Duties – ie: from tariffs.
And that was because it was MUCH easier to concentrate the finite number of Gubmint tax collectors at the ports of entry.
And, seeing as whiskey production was another high revenue activity, Gubmint tax collectors could likewise be placed at the larger whiskey distilleries and thus collect revenue using a MINIMUM of Gubmint personnel.

Meanwhile, I’m a bit pressed for time and will have to get back to you in relation responding to comment # 88 of yours.
However, in relation to Pat Buchanan, while he is clearly better than every GOP candidate that contested a Presidential election in the post Reagan period, that’s not saying much (seeing as ALL have them – Donald Chump included – have been garbage).

But the reality is that Dr Ron Paul is an order of magnitude superior to Buchanan on ALL metrics.
Ron Paul is literally the 21st century reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson – only better.
Ron Paul is [BY FAR] the greatest President that America was never fortunate enough to have.

Mr. Vigilante, I am so very glad that you wrote me without including insults and such. That was a very civil reply, and I will reply in kind. (Just as if country B was levying large tariffs on my country, I would …)

I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how you think that sales taxes, from which excise taxes are not much different, could not be enforced before Credit/Debit card use. State sales taxes have been in force, and enforced, for nearly a century, well before CCs and since I brought up electronics in general, well before all that. The Tax Foundation has this nice map – from it I see that the decade when a preponderance of States adopted it* was the 1930s.

Now, are you saying that the Founders would have raised holy hell (as they did about the whiskey tax), hence it wouldn’t work? I get that. However, until the demographic changes of the last half-century, you didn’t have near as many corrupt store owners, etc., who would have evaded sales tax, requiring, as you wrote, enforcement that would not work with cash sales.

Well, we differ regarding Pat Buchanan, though not on Ron Unz. Yes, the latter would have made a great President. Were he not too old and got elected today, I think we both agree that he couldn’t get us out of our financial hole. He could, though, see us through to the other side, rather than our going in a really bad direction here.

Have a good evening, sir.
.

* As taxes go, though we know we can live fine without most or ANY, sales tax is not the worst, IMO.

This is really going back to what I wrote in comment #1. The Founders did not like paying taxes and wanted a limited government for that and even more important reasons. That limited government served well for well over a century (with the interruption during Lincoln’s time). Most Americans of today couldn’t imagine how much smaller it was.

For this, I’ll just pull a number out of my butt, but even accounting for the large amount of inflation since early last century, the Feral Beast of today must be a hundred times larger. in personnel, budget etc. Back then, they were able to run the Federal Gov’t on tariffs and excise taxes, as per the small table I inserted above. That wasn’t my pitch for tariffs but just my point that, well, it wasn’t like there was a century long depression because of them.

Anyway, hopefully there will be a new Ron Paul column out soon, and I will likely agree with it.

Good morning, Achmed!

I kept the info sent to a minimum…

As George Gordon used to say, (and I’m probably paraphrasing, because it’s been a while) “Everything the government learns about you it learns from you… So keep your mouth shut!”

(Or something like that.)

Anyway…

Another beautiful day here atop the mountain. My snow peas and sugar snaps are popping out of the dirt along with an assortment of springtime flowers and such. I have just a little work to do today finishing a stereo/backup camera install on a 2000 Nissan Xterra. Shouldn’t take me more than an hour or two. Otherwise everything is good and uneventful. I hope you and the Newman family (3 people and one cat) are doing well.

Happy Saturday! ☮

I still don’t see how you think that sales taxes, from which excise taxes are not much different, could not be enforced before Credit/Debit card use.

As I’d made clear before, the U.S Gubmint has a LIMITED number of tax collectors at any given moment. Are we agreed on that?
So, let’s assume we have a 5% sales tax decreed on every state in the Union, and every merchant across the country is obliged to charge 5% extra on all goods sold and forward that to the Gubmint in D.C.
Well, let’s assume now we have a General Store in Dodge City, in some frontier town.
And some farmer walks through the door and purchases 2 x shovels, 1 x hammer, a sack of flour, 1 pound of sugar, two gallons of kerosene, for a grand total of $5.
Add the 5% sales tax and you get a grand total of $5.25.

But said farmer says: ‘Hey, 25 cents is a days wages for me. Give it to me for 5 bucks or I’ll take my business to the other General store in town that doesn’t charge me 5%’.
Can you see Achmed, there is NO WAY the Gubmint can enforce/monitor that transaction at the RETAIL LEVEL (unless a Gubmint tax collector is physically present at that store ALL DAY during trading hours to monitor what takes place).

Everyone is paying cash.
The General Store purchased all their inventory from suppliers for CASH as well.
The Gubmint has NO EFF’N IDEA who bought/sold what.

Now, the General store owner personally knows that farmer who asked him to forego the 5% sales tax. He knows that guy is not a Fed and would never turn him in for not charging the Sales tax.
Of course, if a new guy came to town, someone the store owner had never met (who could well be a Fed), he’d charge him the 5% on any purchases and put that money aside to send to D.C – as a token gesture to prove he was doing the right thing.

But, as large industries grew towards the end of the 19th century, eg: Carnegie (Steel), Rockefeller (Oil) etc, the Gubmint could send a tax collector and charge excise at a PRODUCER LEVEL.
In other words: You can’t send a tax collector to every god forsaken General Store in every two-bit little town across America. But you CAN send the tax collector (to collect those EXCISE TAXES) to a big business like the:

1) Flour mill(s) – of which there might be a handful, and who between them account for 85% of the U.S market

2) The kerosene/oil producers (easy enough there, since Rockefeller had something like 95% of the U.S market share)

3) The steel manufacturer (those steel shovels were made by a subsidiary of the Carnegie empire).

Got it now Achmed? That’s why (and your table confirms it), the revenue from excise taxes was all from the latter half of the 19th century.
You see, in the early part of the 19th century and last decades of the 18th century (during Washington’s time), there were PRECIOUS FEW big businesses (other than perhaps the bigger whiskey distilleries, ship builders and a handful of others).

When the typical American wanted something they went to the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker.
If you wanted a steel shovel, you went to the blacksmith or ironmonger in your local village, and there was another one in the next village 10 miles away.
You see, there were TOO MANY of these tiny enterprises for the Gubmint to send a tax collector to EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM across the nation to charge an excise tax at the PRODUCER level.

So Achmed, you’re correct that electronic machines were not necessary to collect tax (be that a sales tax at point of purchase or an excise tax), at least IN THEORY.
But in practice in early America it was a logistical impossibility because there were TOO MANY tiny producers widely dispersed across the nation.

Not so with the port of entry for a major city. There were only so many large port facilities with wharves/piers/infrastructure for unloading large ships and the goods they brought from across the ocean. Levying a tariff on imports at these FEW ports of entry was far easier and more practical in the early days of the republic.

Achmed, does that clear things up? You’re a smart boy. I assumed you could work that stuff out on your own without me having to spell it out.

You can’t send a tax collector to every god forsaken General Store in every two-bit little town across America. But you CAN send the tax collector (to collect those EXCISE TAXES) to a big business like the:

What exactly do you think has been going on for the last 90 years in the many States that have had sales taxes in place since then? Tax collectors don’t go to every store. The merchants are responsible (not like I like that part of it one bit) for collecting this tax, tabulating it up on their sales for the day/week/month, and sending it in. How could you not know that?

If no tax is sent in to the State government, or some amount that is suspicious, THEN some people will investigate. Sure, you can get away with quite a bit, but basically this is the system in all but 5 States right now, Alaska, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, and New Hampshire.

I can remember as a little kid some owner of the local store where we bought baseball cards telling us “one penny for Governor [REDACTED]“. I first didn’t get it, so my Dad had to explain. Then, we got wise and would get just the lowest amount to not be charged the penny based on rounding, go out and come back and get the next thing, etc.

Only a few people used credit cards in the 1970s, and even then, until I don’t know, the ’90s sometime, there was no computer look-up and no database to store purchases. The guy at the gas station would look up your number in a big book (size of a phone book) to see if it was a stolen one. I imagine the books were updated regularly. He’d take those carbon-copied piece of paper with the CC number on them and the charges and send them… somewhere. What a different world!

Anyway, there has never been a FEDERAL retail sales tax, and hopefully never will be. Were it implemented, it would be in the same way the State sales tax systems are.

Mr. Vigilante, I am so very glad that you wrote me without including insults and such.

Tell me your secret…

Then, we got wise and would get just the lowest amount to not be charged the penny based on rounding, go out and come back and get the next thing, etc.

I recall those says. An Ice Cream Bar was a dime, which was below the threshold to pay the tax, so buy one, then come back and buy another.

Now, I think the threshold is less than a nickel, and good luck finding anything that cheap.

What exactly do you think has been going on for the last 90 years in the many States that have had sales taxes in place since then? Tax collectors don’t go to every store.

Let’s take an Auto accessories store for example, that sells spark plugs, tools, trolley jacks, engine oil/oil filters etc.
In recent decades it uses electronic devices to tabulate sales and tally the sales tax to be forwarded to the respective state Gubmints, and thus easily monitored by the IRS.

But, even before that and before credit card transactions were processed by hand (using carbon paper), and when transactions were paid for in CASH – and to a lesser extent by cheque (ie: prior to the 1960’s), Gubmint agencies had access to the dollar value of goods PURCHASED by that store owner from his supplier.
So, if said store owner purchased $100K worth of goods at the wholesale level from his supplier, and operated on a 50% profit margin (hence expecting to sell for $150K on a RETAIL level) then, assuming there was a 10% sales tax levied in that state, the Gubmint could expect $15K coming its way.

However, if Big Bloated Gubmint only got $3K for example, they would investigate.
Of course the retailer could say: ‘Obviously I did not sell my inventory for $150K’.
He’ll say that some items he bought were losers and wouldn’t sell. So he had to mark them down BELOW COST to move the inventory.
He’d make up all manner of other excuses like ‘there was a lot of shoplifting going on’ etc.

Bottom Line: In the days when most purchases were made by cash there was a much greater opportunity to fudge your sales stats and thus less money was heading the way of Big Gubmint.
That said, Gubmint was much smaller in bygone years than it us today and didn’t need so much money, seeing as it didn’t have nearly as many parasitic Gubmint workers salaries that needed to be funded (or the need to waste hundreds of billions funding boondoggles like solar panels, those bird chopping wind turbines or subsidising those prone-to-combust/fast depreciating EV lemons).

Joker, don’t be coy.
You’re a blood-thirsty neocon that never met a war of aggression initiated by the U.S/Anglo-Zionist empire that you weren’t all-in for.

And it surprises you when I eviscerate you for that?
Why don’t you consider joining the brotherhood of man and call out some of the depraved military provocations going on right now? ie: stuff like:

1) Donald Chump bombing the hell out of the plucky Houthis in Yemen (killing mostly women and children in the process).

2) Chump’s ongoing support* for that sweaty poisonous dwarf Zelensky in that proxy war orchestrated by the ZOG elders in the Square Mile.
(*Yes, yes we all saw that piece of pantomime in the White House where Chump and Vance gave Zelensky a tongue lashing. But it all counted for nought. The flow of arms continues).
If Chump really sought an end to the Ukraine proxy war, he would’ve said (right there and then on camera for the whole world to see):

‘You ungrateful sweaty little yid. How dare you come here and speak the way you do? I’m cutting off the funding for your murderous war right now. You’re on your own little Jewish man’.
But the Orange Baboon won’t do that. He’s a gutless sock puppet of Malignant International Jewry.

3) Chump’s ongoing support for the Apartheid Israeli state, as endless billions are subsidising the genocide of the Gazans – and likewise for those that remain in the West Bank when the Gazans are all dead and buried.

Joker, you will NEVER call these things out – because you are a conscience-free foot soldier and useful idiot of the ZOG establishment.
And thus I will continue treating you like the rabid dog that you are.
Chickenhawks like you need to be pummelled into the turf on a regular basis.

Agreed.

There’s been inflation in the neighborhood of 1,000 – 2,000% on stuff like that in half a century, Jokem. Inflation has gone up and down, but if we use this Money Chimp calculator to get an average yearly rate with compounding, we’d get over 6% average annual inflation in ice cream bars and candy bars over half a century.

Going back a little further, with 2 1964 dimes (still made out of 0.072 tr-oz of silver that year) one could get a gallon of gas for 2 of them and maybe another few pennies then. Now, were the cashier not ignorant about real money (a tall order!) he’d be smart to take 2 of those 1964 dimes for a gallon, as, at least where I live, a gallon of gas is well under the $4.75 in US currency that the 2 dimes are worth. In other words, gas is CHEAP!

Tooth – Straight out of the book of Karl Marx.

I recall the days when Gasoline was $0.35 per gallon. Ahhh, nostalgia…

I have really enjoyed reading your comments and those of Truth Vigilante’s. I grew up in a small town 75 miles (120 km) west of Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1969, I got a job pumping gasoline at a “major-brand” gas station. Regular grade gas was 28.9 CENTS per gallon and ETHYL was 32.9 CENTS per gallon. That was back in the days when regular was 94 octane and eyhyl was 100 octane. Those were REAL octane numbers.

Back then, the gas pumps were mechanical and it took some effort to change the prices on the pumps. Needless to say, there was NO “jacking around” with the prices at any time during the year. My boss was a very honest man and arguably the most skilled mechanic in the area. Car dealers would bring their vehicles to him that they couldn’t repair and he would repair them. He had a Sun machine for diagnostic work on engines and he knew how to use it. He had gone to various schools for training – Carter, Holley & Rochester carburetor schools; automatic transmission schools, etc. He did front end alignments and he KNEW the geometry behind the adjustments.

He taught me practically everything that I know about auto mechanics and was a very patient teacher. I learned a lot from him. Back then, very few people used credit cards; most used cash. He did NOT work on any foreign cars or “high performance” cars. Some of the guys driving high performance cars would come into the gas station and ask him for advice and he would give it to them. He gave me advice on my own high performance car, but I had to make the repairs myself.

There was one customer who came in to buy gas. I remember him and his name to this day. He always used a credit card and I asked my boss about that. He told me that the customers who “had money” used credit cards and carried very little cash on them. His clientele bore this logic out. My boss would say that people who drove foreign cars were “oddballs” and back then, that was true. Nowadays, it seems that people who drive American-brand cars are the oddballs (myself included).

When I go into a store and see the high prices, I just divide the price by TEN and that would be the price that the item would have cost back in 1969 – at least as concerning high-quality American made products are concerned.

I obtained my first full-time job at a local canning plant, where I was paid $2.24 per hour. That was for UNSKILLED factory work, which anyone could do, with a modicum of training. I retired from a factory in 2017, as a SKILLED industrial electrician (United Auto Workers Journeyman electrician, by the way) and at the time that I retired, I was making $25 and some change per hour. I could purchase MORE with the $2.24 in 1969 than I could with the $25+ in 2017. That is how much the dollar had lost REAL VALUE in that time. And it has only got worse since then, with NO END IN SIGHT.

Thank you.

I have really enjoyed reading your comments and those of Truth Vigilante’s.

I’m glad, but I don’t see how! Ha, I didn’t. I don’t like getting nasty and insulting like that, but I’m not gonna take it lying down either.

Anyway, I really enjoyed your stories in this comment. I’ll write more tomorrow.

I don’t like getting nasty and insulting like that

Achmed, what you interpret as nastiness is, as I’ve explained to others, a dose of ‘Tough Love’.
And only tough love can shake certain people out of their cult-like trance.

The fact is that you have some beliefs (about Donald Chump, about DOGE*, about tariffs), that are divorced from reality.
That’s where I step in to do some enlightening (with a little bitch slapping thrown into the mix).
(*As I explained in a previous comment, what DOGE is doing is just window dressing, it’s just shuffling deck chairs around on a sinking Titanic).

As surely as night follows day, I can GUARANTEE you that the budget deficit Donald Chump runs in his first year will be WELL NORTH of Biden’s worst year.
Moreover, every subsequent year will be WORSE than the preceding year, as deficits (and the Federal Gubmint’s debt burden), go to the moon.
That will be PROOF that Donald Chump is a BIG SPENDING RINO (he was a Democrat all his life, and only moved over to the GOP because the ZOG elders instructed him to do so).

I already know what the spinmeisters in Chump’s administration are going to say in the immediate aftermath of his first massive budget deficit. They’ll say:
‘Yes, it will take time for U.S industry to restructure and for the downsizing of Gubmint to get into full swing. In the next year or two the deficits will get worse, before they get better. But soon enough, there will be a turnaround, a manufacturing led renaissance, and the deficits will shrink’.
ACTUAL OUTCOME: The deficits will get worse, before they get MUCH WORSE.

Achmed, will you be man enough to approach me and admit you were wrong if Chump’s deficits are worse than Brandon’s?
I can assure you that I will unreservedly do likewise for you (Brad Anbro is my witness), if I get it wrong (in the unlikely event that an inch perfect alignment of the planets occurs).

No need to thank me for what I’m doing for you – you’re welcome.

Ahhh, geeze…

Achmed, what you interpret as nastiness is, as I’ve explained to others, a dose of ‘Tough Love’.

One’s man’s nastiness and being an asshole is another man’s “Ron Paul is Lord, and I am his prophet. Thou shalt not write such that I agree with not, in these threads. So let it be blathered, so let it be done!”

Sorry to set you straight, but, as per my very 1st comment here, these tariffs are the right thing to do for 3 reasons.

As for your challenge, the problem is you are not much more of a Constitutional Scholar than Barrack Hussein Øb☭ma is, if you don’t know that it’s the US House of Representin’ that spends the money.

My point was the Trump & DOGE are making a big effort to cut spending. I wouldn’t call it “window dressing”, but let me say YET AGAIN, that it can’t make a huge dent. Yet, they don’t get to decide this. He’s doing what he can as the Admin. of the Exec. Branch, but Congress has the say.

Trump-45, OTOH, yeah, after the economy was deliberately put into a spin during the dreaded Flu Manchu PanicFest, well we may as well spend $4 Trillion in ONE YEAR (may have run up to $6 Trillion EXTRA through ’22). Yes, Trump didn’t give a damn, and Congress LUVS LUVS LUVS spending that money. They sure weren’t going to argue.*

.

* Even back 40-45 years ago, when Reagan had a deal with Congress (ha!) to build up defense spending to end the USSR (it worked) while cutting domestic spending, Congress reneged. Reagan was then told “deficits don’t matter.” They didn’t … till they did. (See my next comment.)

A riddle for Mr. Truth Vigilante follows:

Riddle me this, TruthMan. (Even if it really would … ) How can a country cut spending yet end up with a larger deficit?

I don’t go as far back as that, Mr. Anbro, but even as I recall, we were a different country back then. One other difference that can explain why we America was such a great place back then is demographics. That’s a subject that T.V. here (and to a degree Ron Paul) refuses to address, yet it’s nearly* the sole reason I care about President Trump being in office.

On a lighter note, thanks for those car stories. I have a friend that likes the German cars more but can work on anything. His problem is that he will pick up a “stray” and work on EVERY little thing – even small dents in the doors on a 225,000 mile 20 y/o Honda – without realizing how much money (mostly in his own time) he’s spent. You can’t sell it for what you put in, so then he ends up keeping lots of these poor orphans. Then, they have to be kept up. “I can’t retire”, he says. “Too much to do!” Yeah, well, just keep 5, OK, 8 of them…

I do remember the old CC swipe machines. Do you remember the big books used to look up stolen card numbers? What a hassle. However, my family works in a different mode from most Americans, wanting to pay for everything as we go. Therefore my Dad only got a CC in the late 1990s or so. Before that, once there were 800 numbers to call to order things in the mail, he’d ask me to use my CC to order it and pay me back. No early adopters we are! I would be glad to have only the debit card – not trying to borrow one cent, BUT, I couldn’t rent a car with it one time – they said I didn’t have bad credit, but I’ve got NO credit – so I have a copy of my wife’s one now.

If you’re interested, Brad, I’ll link you to some of my Peak Stupidity posts on Inflation. 10x is one thing, a BAD thing, of course, but to add to that there is the quality problem. If I have to buy 3 bikes from China for my kid over the years because they keep breaking and are not made to be fixed, even if they cost 1/2 of what a quality American-made bike would (were there such a thing), I’m paying more. That’s a form of inflation too.

My old Schwinn lasted me from Kindergarten though 9th grade. (Yes, the seat was way up in the air, and it was embarrassing near the end there!) It never broke – just lost in the moves.

Have a nice day, Brad!

.

* I mean, no matter what, I’d still rather hear from or see him than from the Communist born, drugged-out drunkard retard Kameltoe Harris. That’s assuming I had a TV, which I don’t.

Thanks for the reply. I agree with most of what T-V writes, but we agree to disagree on a few things. I will be 74 years old in June and I see absolutely NOTHING getting better here in the USA. I can appreciate most of what the Libertarians seem to stand for and believe, but I have no confidence in their gov’t “hands off approach” affording any protection to the PEOPLE from the banksters and the large corporations. Apparently they seem to think that the individual states will protect their citizens from abuse? The states are as corrupt and dishonest as the federal government, and just as fiscally & morally bankrupt.

As far as credit cards are concerned, I remember very little about handling credit cards when pumping gas in my home town. When going to college in 1970 – 1971, I worked part-time at a Standard (Amoco) gas station on the NW side of Chicago. This was when “unleaded” was first being introduced and the REAL octane values of the gasoline were dropping. Most of the customers used cash and almost all of the customers got their cars filled up. Very little of the $3 or $5 purchases.

That gas station was owned by a father & son, who were Irish. They had a policy that ALL of the windows of EVERYONE’S vehicles got cleaned! They also had an incentive for the pump jocks that if a fan belt or a pair of wiper blades was sold to the customer, the pump jock would get a 50-cent commission. They made it very plain that they did NOT want any unnecessary sales of things that the customers did not NEED. They were honest! I remember the dad going through the thick books of fraudulent credit card numbers, but I never concerned myself with that. That gas station pumped so much gas that in the winter time that my hands & feet would become frost-bit, which I am paying for now. We pump jocks had very little time to stand around, as there were always customers waiting to make purchases. The father & son owners had a very good reputation and deservedly so.

Regarding television, the ONLY TV that I watch are the murder mysteries, such as 20/20, 48 Hours and Dateline, because they are based on true events and because it gives me renewed confidence that there are at least “some” (though, not many) lawyers, judges and police individuals who want to do the right thing. I don’t watch anything else.

I try to keep busy with my ham radio hobby but, like everything else, ham radio is changing. I usually use Morse code and the level of activity is way down from years past. People today, and especially the “kids,” do not care about ham radio. They only care about their phones, their tattoos & piercings, the CRAP coming out of Hollywood, and the souped-up lawnmowers that they call “cars.”

Take care…

Dream on!

As for your challenge, the problem is you are not much more of a Constitutional Scholar than Barrack Hussein Øb☭ma is, if you don’t know that it’s the US House of Representin’ that spends the money.

Well, the Senate and the President have to vote on it, but it is supposed to originate in the House.

OK, here we go – I found the time to respond to your comment # 88.
I’m familiar with Pat Buchanan’s position on a lot of issues, and I don’t disagree that he’s pretty good on most things (and certainly much better than the garbage Presidents the U.S has had in recent decades).
So I read the link you provided (Tariffs: The Taxes That Made America Great), and I can tell you, if Buchanan believes that, he is economically illiterate.
As I’ve said before, America became great DESPITE the imposition of tariffs.
It would’ve been greater still without them.

In his article Buchanan wrote:

If you choose not to purchase Chinese goods and instead buy comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you do not pay the tariff.

China loses the sale. Should Donald Trump impose that 25% tariff on all $500 billion in Chinese exports to the USA, it would cripple China’s economy.

As you can see, Buchanan himself admits, if China loses a sale then:
‘Consumers buy comparable goods made IN OTHER NATIONS or [perhaps] the USA’.
And that’s the rub, sales lost by China will overwhelmingly going to other NATIONS (like Vietnam, Bangledesh or some other third world hell hole).

Moreover, Chinese businesses that lose some sales, have the option of RELOCATING their factories to those other nations and still sell the same product as before to the U.S, and reap the lion share of the profits. (This is not a course of action I would recommend, seeing as the USD is going down for the count. BUT, it may be a short term measure some business owners adopt while the USD still has world reserve currency status).
This is what the Japanese auto industry did a long time ago. A lot of its cars (Honda Accords are made in Thailand, Toyotas Corollas made in South Africe etc), are examples.

Buchanans assertion that tariffs imposed on all Chinese goods would cripple their economy is NONSENSE.
Yes, there would be a period of readjustment, but China would soon find NEW CUSTOMERS.
ie: customers that offer tangible goods and commodites that China desires, and not DEADBEAT customers like the U.S.

You heard right – the U.S is a DEADBEAT customer. Because it pays for most of its stuff with freshly printed/digitally conjured greenbacks – greenbacks that will soon enough drop like a stone when the USD loses world reserve currency status.
So, the sooner China (and the rest of the world), weans itself off the USD, the LESS BiILLIONS OF THEM THEY’LL BE STUCK* WITH and lose out when then USD goes down for the count.
(*Over recent years the Chinese have been unloading their holdings of U.S treasuries at a rapid clip – they hold hundreds of billions less than they did 10 years ago).

The U.S produces few things that China desires. To the extent that it provides anything, they are things like soy beans, wheat and other agricultural/mineral output.
If the U.S imposes tariffs on all Chinese products, China will find OTHER MARKETS for their products and simultaneously retaliate by stopping purchases of U.S products – like FDA approved beef.

Well, guess which other countries have huge herds of beef cattle? That’s right – Australia and Argentina. to name just two.
And if China now massively escalates its tonnage of beef, soy beans and whatever else from these countries (instead of buying U.S beef), then ipso facto these countries will have BILLIONS MORE TO SPEND ON CHINESE PRODUCTS in return.

Got it Achmed? China, by being forced to find new markets for their products will CREATE NEW MARKETS as it starts trading more with those respective nations.
It’s a ‘TWO-FOR’ for China, in that it also receives LESS in return of those worthless USD.
(In the past China accumulated so many USD in surplus trade that they had no other option than to purchase U.S treasuries – thus lending the money back to America to be able to purchase those products in the first place).

Did you absorb that Achmed? That is called VENDOR FINANCING.
Because America does not have the money to buy Chinese products, the latter LEND THE U.S COUNTLESS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS by purchasing those U.S treasuries.
That’s why the U.S is a DEADBEAT CUSTOMER.
Buchanan goes on to write:

In the half-century following passage of the Corn Laws, the British showed the folly of free trade.
They began the second half of the 19th century with an economy twice that of the USA and ended it with an economy half of ours

This assertion, whilst true, is misleading.
After adopting free trade, Britain was MUCH RICHER in 1900 than it was in 1800 – proof that free trade delivers stellar results.
However, the U.S (starting from a lower base), GREW MANY TIMES FASTER because, tariffs notwithstanding, the U.S was much freer than Britain, it had LESS GUBMINT than Britain, and did all the other things much better than Britain.

Coupled to that the U.S unlocked its MASSIVE RESERVOIR OF UNTAPPED WEALTH as the west/mid west was settled and huge acreage of farmland produced great prosperity for the nation – not to mention the discoveries of gold in California (1848), oil in Pennsylvania, the enormous wealth generated for the nation by J.D Rockefeller (no tariffs needed – he was the most efficient producer of kerosene and oil related products and at one stage contolled something like 90% of the entire world’s oil refining capacity).

Bottom Line: Tariffs protect inefficient industries and shield them from competition.
As a result, favoured cronies of Big Gubmint can produce sub par quality items at inflated prices, knowing all while that consumers will buy their output.
As a result of tariffs U.S businesses will be LESS LIKELY to innovate, less likely to invest in cutting edge technology to try and outcompete their competitors in the world market.

In a nutshell, if U.S industry is prevented from having to compete with the world’s best in the market, it’s descent into the abyss will be further accelerated.

To that end, I hope Donald Chump imposes a ton of tariffs. The sooner the U.S economy implodes, the sooner ther rest of the world will rise and enjoy a standard of living that is commensurate with its productive output – while the parasitic U.S is left to wither on the vine.

Riddle me this, TruthMan. How can a country cut spending yet end up with a larger deficit?

OK, these are back of the envelope figures, but they will suffice to get the point through.
In the next year or so the U.S will take in about $5 trillion in income/corporate/capitals gains tax/tariffs etc, but will spend about $7 trillion – entailing a $ 2 trillion deficit.

Now, one of the biggest line items in the outgoings is the INTEREST on the $36 trillion Federal debt.
And that is approx. $1 trillion per year.
Now, Donald Chump has intimidated the Fed into lowering the Fed Funds rate a little in recent times. BUT, the bond market has been IGNORING the Fed Funds rate.
And thus yields on treasuries (esp. the all important 10 year bonds) have been going UP.

The bond market is where the U.S Gubmint funds its borrowings to cover the deficits.
And the interest paid each year is GOING UP – and will go up a much more in the coming years.
So, if DOGE cuts $200 billion of Gubmint spending for example, but debt servicing on the debt increases by $400 billion (which it is likely to do soon), then the DEFICIT GETS WORSE.

But I have news for you. The OVERALL U.S budget is NOT BEING CUT in nominal terms.
Yes, Chump will make a song and dance and announce with great fanfare that USAID or some other parasitic department is being defunded etc.
But elsewhere Chump is spending like a drunken sailor – to an extent that is MULTIPLES MORE than any cuts being made.

Bottom Line: The Deficits will get WORSE year after year under Donald Chump – you can take that to the bank. That you can possibly believe otherwise is indicative of the chronic extent of your TFS (Trump Fellater Syndrome).

Meanwhile, we’ve all seen it reported that the U.S has a $36 trillion dollar debt (it will actually tick over to $37 trillion in the coming months).
Click on the link below and see it acceeeeelarating in real time:
https://usdebtclock.org/

Well, I have news for you. It’s actually WORSE than that.
For example, there is a thing called ‘Student Debt’. The last time I looked it was around $1.8 trillion.
Well, when the Gubmint loans out money for a college education, it BORROWS that money (because it is flat broke), and then pays interest on those borrowings.

Achmed, are you aware that Student Debt is NOT INCLUDED in the $36 trillion Federal debt figure? That’s right, said debt accumulated is classified as an ‘OFF BUDGET’ item.
The U.S has many trillions more of these ‘off budget’ expenditures. But YOU the taxpayer are still on the hook for making interest repayments on those off budget line items.

In a nutshell, your Gubmint uses all manner of statistical chicanery to minimise the debt figures.
And of course Americans are also on the hook for the huge debts accumulated by state governments and local municipalities – whichs runs into countless trillions more.

Achmed, the U.S is SOL and is on borrowed time.
It will be engulfed in a karmic tsunami for all its profligacy over the years (not to mention the death and despair it’s caused the planet by way of its murderous foreign interventions).

Bingo!. You got it. You make it longer than it had to be, but the answer is indeed INTEREST.

Even were the interest rates to stay (be forced by the FED) low for longer, so long as spending is still greater than revenue – which it WILL be – debt accumulates and the net interest payments (via redeeming of bonds) will go up. Will it go up faster than the deficit (spending – revenues) goes up?

Well, that’s almost a moot point, as interest rates this low and the printing of money related to that and to ALLOW a deficit are what is keeping inflation going. There’s no easy way out, as I’ve written on this thread already and on the Peak Stupidity blog

The rest of what you wrote here, come on, man, I”e been writing about this stuff here – Economics (topic key) for 8 years. There’s nothing you wrote there that I haven’t known for years. I thank you for spelling it out for others though.’

Peak Stupidity has probably 10 posts on the guaranteed student loan scam. It’s what’s called a “moral hazard”. That’s the real problem.

Nope, I agree with Pat Buchanan, sorry. Your point about commodities (especially) being fungible (basically, the definition) is a good one. Blanket tariffs are the way to go, but remember, much of the tariff levying Trump is doing has to do with retaliation, threats, etc. He’s quite right on most of it.

I’m not sure if you understand this, but one reason China has been able to export so much is that they have been pegging their currency the Yuan (RMB) to the US dollar for as long as I have been keeping up – that means nearly 2 decades at least. That helps their exports to the US. If they want to keep taking soon-to-be-toilet-paper US $$ for their Cheap China-made Crap, that’s THEIR PROBLEM. Nobody’s forcing them to.

Yes, the $ will be going down at some point. America will have to become self-sufficient again, but with the people we have now … who knows? This has much to do with demographic changes that have de-unified the country as compared to say the 1970s, much less the 1930s (when there was much economic pain).

You never have answered a single question/point of mine regarding the immigration invasion. Do you think that’s not a factor? The same problems apply to Australia too, perhaps worse, because free-shit Socialism is accepted by the people there more than it is here. (I mean, we have it, but most people know it’s wrong.)

I’ve been looking at that debt clock since it was at $20 Trillion debt, which is, unfortunately, not that long a time ago., Yes, total debt just of the US Gov’t is much higher, when you count unfunded obligations,

‘They did a nice job with that page!

I’m not sure if you understand this, but one reason China has been able to export so much is that they have been pegging their currency the Yuan (RMB) to the US dollar

Really Achmed? You’ve seen enough of my economic knowledge on display by now to know that it is ‘encyclopaedic’. Yet you assume there’s a chance I wasn’t aware that the Chinese readjust their yuan exchange rate Vs the USD from time to time.

Of course the Yuan is not ‘pegged’ to the USD in the sense of being 1:1.
The Chinese Gubmint likes to keep it in a range – currently USD $1= a little over 7 Yuan.
Meanwhile, something which I suspect you’re not aware of is that the ZOG controlled U.S Gubmint manipulates the USD – and to a FAR GREATER DEGREE than the Chinese are tampering with their currency.

You see, the USD should be worth far less than it presently is.
Think about it. If GAAP accounting standards had been applied to the U.S Gubmint, it would’ve been declared insolvent 20 years ago.
It is a deadbeat customer, it has a hollowed out manufacturing sector, makes almost nothing that anyone wants, and is in debt to its eyeballs. There should’ve been a run on your currency long ago.
But the U.S Gubmint, in collaboration with its grovelling vassals, has been artificially propping up your dollar.

But the jig will soon be up. When holders of large quantities of USD/USD denominated assets (U.S treasuries/stocks/bonds/real estate etc), see the writing on the wall, and that time fast approaches (coupled to the fact that Donald Chump’s policies on tariffs/sanctions/bully boy bravado etc, are fast tracking the demise of the USD), then USD holders will all RUSH FOR THE EXITS at once, as everyone tries to unload them rather than get stuck with worthless IOU’s.

In relation to this question of yours:
‘You never have answered a single question/point of mine regarding the immigration invasion …. ‘,
I did respond to it, but you evidently didn’t pay attention.
I said it was good that the uncontrolled illegal immigration into the U.S not only doesn’t stop, but that it INCREASES.

You see, the U.S is the Great Satan – the deliverer of Death and Despair to the world.
And while there are countless great people there (Dr Ron Paul, Thomas Massie, G Edward Griffin, Dr Peter McCullough etc), unfortunately the American people as a collective HAVE FAILED.
They have failed to overthrow your corrupt electoral system and fake democracy and install a strongman in a military coup.

So, anything that expedites the demise of the U.S and bankrupts it sooner (eg: uncontrolled immigration, tariffs, reckless fiscal and monetary policy), I’m all for that.
The MORE THE MERRIER.
The sooner the U.S sinks into the abyss, the sooner the world will be freed from the murderous U.S foreign interventions and meddling in their affairs.
I pray this day comes soon.

Meanwhile, in relation to Australia, we have NO FLOOD OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS – none whatsoever. Yes, in the eyes of many, we do have more LEGAL IMMIGRATION than many Aussies would like. But it is a SMALL FRACTION (in per capita terms) of what the U.S and places like Canada and Ireland are experiencing.
Australia is overwhelmingly white Anglo-Celtic/European and likely to stay that way for a long, LONG time.

Meanwhile, in relation to Australia, we have NO FLOOD OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS – none whatsoever. Yes, in the eyes of many, we do have more LEGAL IMMIGRATION than many Aussies would like. But it is a SMALL FRACTION (in per capita terms) of what the U.S and places like Canada and Ireland are experiencing.

Liar. From ZOG-wiki:

Australia has one of the highest amounts of foreign-born residents in the world (both in total numbers, and per capita), as well as one of the highest immigration rates in the world.

Immigrants account for 30% of the population, the highest proportion among major Western nations.

Oooops, where’s Orange Croc Dundee when you need him?

Australia is overwhelmingly white Anglo-Celtic/European and likely to stay that way for a long, LONG time.

2 million of the 7.5 million foreign-born come from the UK (~ 1/2 of them), New Zealand (~ 1/4), S. Africa, and the US. That still leaves 5 1/2 million out of the 26 million “Australians”, right at 20%, who are Asians of all stripes. India is #1 (go figure), China is #2, with both these contingents having expanded 47% and 8% respectively, from ’16 to ’21. 4 more years have gone by.

None of these number includes the children of immigrants from these Asian (and a number of African) countries, because they themselves are not foreign-born. 70% of Australians as of now are Euro-descended.

“‘e’s mike-in’ it up as ‘e goes along!”

One of us is indeed either a liar (or unable to do an in depth analysis of Australia’s demographics).

As I said in my comment, we have no ILLEGAL immigration problem.
Those here are LEGAL migrants.
And, in the post WWII period, Australia took in millions of foreign born immigrants in the 1950’s/60’s/70’s in particular.

And they came overwhelmingly from places like Britain, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia and other EUROPEAN countries.
(During the 80’s and beyond we’ve tended to get a lot of immigrants from neighbouring New Zealand as well as those other European nations mentioned. We also took in a lot of white South Africans and Rhodesians, both before and after the blacks took over).
Click on the link below and see for yourself that Melbourne, Australia has the 3rd* largest population of Greeks of any city in the world:
https://www.studycountry.com/wiki/which-city-has-the-largest-greek-population-outside-of-greece

(*For decades, Melbourne had the largest number of Greeks of ANY city in the world, with the sole exception of Athens. But, as the population grew and many of those Greeks passed away, that % was diluted).

In recent years the percentages of Chinese and Indians that are coming to Australia are higher than in the past. But they still account for a small percentage of the population as a whole.

More importantly, to the extent that we are getting Chinese and Indians, they are almost all PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE (Engineers, those with medical/IT expertise etc).
In other words they are individuals that VALUE ADD to the economy – not parasites that go straight on welfare like the hordes the U.S is allowing in on its southern border.

Summary: As I said before, the overwhelming percentage of Aussies (even though many millions of them are foreign born), are WHITE ANGLO-CELTIC/EUROPEAN.
So I think an apology is in order from you Achmed for your scurrilous accusation that I’m a liar.

Up until 1966, Australia enforced a White Australia Policy (this was in fact a law).
In other words, immigrants from Asia, Africa were not allowed*.
(*The sole exception was for those Australian occupation forces in Japan post WWII who brought back a Japanese war bride. I believe that was also the case, although to a much smaller extent, for those Australia troops that brought back a Korean war bride in the early 1950’s).

Achmed, surely by now you must know that I don’t make assertions unless I can back them up with a DELUGE of supporting evidence.

Meanwhile, the following article which I read the other day is something that you (and all the other MAGAts) desperately need to read. (It will hopefully shake all of you out of your Mass Formation Psychosis).
It’s written by the always truthful Chuck Baldwin and titled ‘Trump Shows His True Colors’:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/03/chuck-baldwin/trump-shows-his-true-colors/

And, seeing as I took the time to read the link you posted to the Pat Buchanan article you suggested (as indeed I’ve done for those other links you’ve posted), it’s only fair that you read this article.
And, if you disagree with anything Chuck says, please advise and we can discuss it.

Hey, I can read, Mr. Vigilante, so I did get that you are talking LEGAL immigration, though I appreciate the big letters for my far-sightedness.

Did YOU read? I gave you numbers, most of them from back in ’21, and remember that the foreign-born for non-Whites doesn’t include their offspring who are, you guessed it. The evidence is what I just gave you. Is 20% of Aussies being foreign-born Asians a small percentage? Indians and Chinese together, sure, that’s only about 5%, but that was 4 years ago.

I gave you the rate of increase for the Indians – +47% in 5 years. You are a professional, yet you say you’re glad these replacement professionals are coming. Good luck with that! It’s the Indian crowd that implements the most nepotism. Hell, it’s not even just Indians, but specific castes. With your encyclopedic knowledge, of course you know what a caste is, but do you want to deal with all that first hand?

The numbers there aren’t good – no need to lie bullshit about it.

I’d rather have the ILLEGAL problem than the LEGAL. (We have both) It’s easier to do something about massive numbers of illegal aliens vs Nationals or Citizens.

So, T.V., you may want to get off your high horse and think about Australia’s problems. Oh, all caused by ZOG, you say? Did ZOG push for the immigration into Australia? (Not rhetorical, I’d like to know.) You keep claiming this victim status, when you should get off your own ass like I have and help!

I will read the Chuck Baldwin article. I VOTED for the guy, back in either ’08 or ’12.

The numbers there aren’t good – no need to lie bullshit about it.

I agree, there is never a need to bullshit. That’s why I never do*.
(*It’s ironic that you, a somewhat blackened pot who, to put it kindly, has been pretty loose with the facts, should be levelling that at ‘shiny kettle’ me.).
I only deal in facts.

Now, in relation to the ‘47% increase in Indians in 5 years’, I’m reminded of the exchanges I had with radical leftists and Maoists in some UR articles in the last few weeks.
One imbecile was boasting how Chairman Mao was responsible for China’s 6% GDP growth after the Cultural Revolution, and how the western nations were allegedly envious of his performance. To which I replied:

Mao inherited a China in 1949 that was a basket case with negligible per capita GDP.
The near entirety of the population was living in grinding poverty.
Then, somehow, he managed to reduce the GDP per capita even lower still in subsequent years – no mean feat.
OBVIOUSLY, when you’ve reduced average wages to $1 per week (or something of that order). you could get 50% growth for years and you’d still be left with a subsistence income.

Similarly, your 47% growth in the number of Indians is meaningless, since you make no mention of the LOW STARTING POINT that we began with.
What you need to furnish is the number of Indians in NOMINAL TERMS, and you’ll see it’s not a lot. I mean, if we started with 1000 Indians 5 years ago, and now we’re up to 1470, that’s hardly cause for alarm.

Summary: Some Aussies would argue that we’re taking too many immigrants in absolute numbers, while others only argue about the source countries where those people are originating from.
But one thing I can tell you with certainty, is that Australia (on a like-for-like basis) is not getting anywhere near as many migrants as places like the U.S, Canada and western Europe.

Lastly, you raise some RED Flags when you write stuff like:

Oh, all caused by ZOG, you say? Did ZOG push for the immigration into Australia?

Generally, only Jews (or shabbos goys) talk that way. Are you Jewish Achmed (and just using an Arabic slant on the ‘Alfred E. Neumann’ Mad character)?
Because anyone who’s looked into it knows that the Zionist Usury Banking Cartel (aka ZOG) controls the entirety of the western financial and political systems.
Surely you can’t be that ignorant to not know this Achmed?

And seeing as both parties in Australia’s duopoly (actually it’s a One Party system with slightly differing factions – just like in the U.S), no matter what side of the political aisle our Prime Minister is from, there will be a tendency for more immigration.

That said, Aussie citizens do not take too kindly to having a flood of foreigners coming to our shores.
So we don’t have it anywhere near as bad as you fools in the U.S, Canada and western Europe.
So, that answers your question (not that any thinking person didn’t already know the answer).
Yes of course ZOG is responsible for the influx if immigrants into western countries.

WHO THE EFF ELSE COULD IT POSSIBLY BE that’s passed on these instructions to the corrupt western politicians?
Were you thinking it might be the Easter Bunny?
Man oh man, I can’t get over how gullible you are Achmed, to not be aware of a multitude of universal truths.

I can see you’re not a numbers guy, which means you can only go so far in understanding the world. No, I should have pasted in absolute numbers from this wiki page. You didn’t have the numbers to get exactly what you needed, but I did note that India is #1 and Asians (just foreign-born ones) are 20% of the population. You supposedly know who they are, but here, anyway:

’21 ———— ’16
673,352 455,385

There are your absolute numbers. That’s out of (in’25) 27 1/2 million total people. ooops, got new numbers from here. Now it’s 976,000, but granted 122,000 are students. Will the students go home? In America, it’s not bloody likely.

Next, right here on the Unz site, I just happened upon something in this Greg Hood article.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns recently admitted as much. “We live in the best country in the world, but people come to Australia from all different races and religions, different countries, different cultures, because they want to live together in peace and harmony,” he said at a March 18 news conference. “You have to take steps to protect that. There can’t just be a willy-nilly, race to the bottom where civic society turns a blind eye and says ‘freedom of speech, people can say what they want.’ That’s not the case in New South Wales. We don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason is that we love the country that we’ve got here and we’re going to take steps to protect what’s been built up over decades.”

[My bolding]

Nice! Perhaps, Mr. Vigilante, you should get off your ass and try to do something about the existential issue there in Australia. Things happen fast… especially when the average Truth Vigilante sits on his ass. What’d we do here, you may well ask? We voted in Donald Trump, who, all flaws aside, WAS the only one who cared about this problem, much less was going to do something. He has. I wish him luck. I think you do to, so great!

Now, what’s going to happen to Australia again?

As I wrote, I even voted for Chuck Baldwin for President. Going by memory here, he moved from Cross City, Florida to Western Montana. Was that for better demographics (Cross City is only 68% White, though Dixie County is 82%)? Who knows – he said it was because his new location was a better prepper place. I can believe it… due a lot to the demographics.

Anyway, paragraph 2 is wrong:

Trump won a landslide election last November primarily on the promise to STOP America’s “stupid” wars. It is now obvious to everyone that, while Trump might be able to negotiate a deal to stop the war in Ukraine—a war that Russia has already won—he is decidedly intent on accelerating and expanding U.S. wars in the Middle East.

MAGA people are against the foreign warmongering more than the next group. However, we voted for Trump PRIMARILY due to his stance on the immigration invasion. Chuck Baldwin really ought to know that – he ain’t stupid.

He seems to hate the Evangelicals, though he is one. I get his points otherwise and agree with those quoted in that column.

I see you avoided responding to this question of mine:

Generally, only Jews (or shabbos goys) talk that way. Are you Jewish Achmed?

(I asked that in response to this very suspect query of yours: ‘Oh, all caused by ZOG, you say?).

Seriously Achmed, seeing as ZOG is (by a factor of 100 or so), more powerful than any rival group on the planet, who the eff else could it be?
I mean, they orchestrated 9/11, killed JFK/RFK/JFK Jr, are responsible for the Mass Cull of Humanity during the Covid Psyop, propagated the Anthropogenic Global Warming hoax and are responsible for the Ukraine proxy war (to name just a handful of their heinous crimes).
How it is that you couldn’t work that out on your own?

This is what I wrote in another thread in responding to some fool that suggested the Free Masons or some other nickel and dime cabal were more powerful than ZOG.
(This is proof that no other secret society/entity/collective of individuals on the planet is within two orders of magnitude of the Zionist Usury Banking Cartel):

They have multiples of U.S GDP in financial wherewithal and can print/digitally conjure scores of trillions more with a key stroke on their central bank computers to dole out to themselves and their Talmudic cronies.
(This they can do by virtue of their ownership/control of the U.S Federal Reserve and the other major western central banks).

Other than the immense wealth they can conjure into existence through their control of the western central banks, they also lord over:

) The World Bank/IMF/BIS
2) The SWIFT International Payments transfer system
3) The entirety of western academia
4) The entirety of the western MSM
5) The entirety of the western Health bureaucracies (hence the reason why they were able to foist the Covid Psyop on us and the rollout of the toxic clot shots)
6) Control over the public school curriculum in the west
7) All the major western book publishing houses
8) And control EVERY significant western politician (and obviously all branches of Gubmint in the U.S. ie: the Legislative, the Executive and the Jew-diciary).

And of course ZOG have been behind all the Cultural Marxism, the push for DEI, ESG, transgender bathrooms, BLM … you name it.

And, one final thing. After reading the Pat Buchanan article and telling you where I found fault with it, I posted a link to a Chuck Baldwin article I read (one in which he was absolutely scathing of the Orange Baboon).
I asked you to read and it and tell me where Baldwin got it wrong. (Which shouldn’t be too great a burden – seeing as you told me yourself that you liked him/voted for him).
And all you could come up with is ‘Paragraph 2 is wrong’.

OK then, so you acknowledge that in every other paragraph of that article, Baldwin is right in his condemnation of the Orang-U-tan?
In any case, Baldwin is NOT wrong on paragraph 2.
Because it is CLEAR that Donald Chump is moving heaven and earth to start a hot war with Iran.

Now, whether or not ‘the MAGAts are against the foreign warmongering more than the next group’, that is neither here nor there.
You see, Chump LIED to the MAGAts to get elected. Now that all of you have fulfilled your purpose as useful idiots, he can discard you, as he goes on to deliver ZOG’s agenda and:

1) Massacre the remaining Palestinians in Gaza (and thereafter those in the West Bank)
2) Starts a hot war with Iran.

You know Achmed, maybe you’ve posted some condemnation of the depraved Jews in Apartheid Israel and their Mass Murder of mostly women and children, but I don’t recall EVER seeing you mention it. WHY is that?
Do you have a moral compass? Are you or are you not appalled by what the Ashkenazi miscreants are doing in Occupied Palestine?

Achmed, you need to click on the link below to a recent article (it’s a short read so even someone with your adolescent attention span should be able to absorb it), in UR titled ‘Trump’s Absurd Trade Policies Will Impoverish Americans and Harm the World’.
It was authored by JEFFREY D. SACHS:
https://www.unz.com/article/trumps-absurd-trade-policies-will-impoverish-americans-and-harm-the-world/

I don’t agree with everything Sachs says but, for the most part, he is much better informed about the effects of tariffs than you are. The final paragraph of his article reads:

Trump’s tariffs will fail to close the trade and budget deficits, raise prices, and make America and the world poorer by squandering the gains from trade.
The U.S. will be the enemy of the world for the harm that it is causing to itself and the rest of the world.

Your link is for a bunch of Environmental Socialists.
Might be called useful idiots for the Marxist movement.