I'm a freshman in high school and I'm new to AE (and economics in general since I haven't even taken a class on it ever). I read the articles on Mises.org and LewRockwell.com daily.
One of my teachers is very conservative and bashes Obama all the time (rare for a public school teacher) and I often get a kick out of when goes on his tirades.
But today he went on about how he loves Alexander Hamilton. So I told my teacher he isn't really pro free markets since he agrees with Hamilton. I told him Hamilton set up the first central bank and was a mercantalist and protectionist.
My teacher said that Hamilton set up that central bank to pay off all the Revolutionary War debt.
That's not true is it?
I want to set up a good argument against Hamilton.
-His central bank caused prices to raise over 70% in five years
-He was against international trade and wanted America to be a domestic monopoly
Hamilton's Curse by Thomas DiLorenzo.
My favorite online shop: www.cafepress.com/libertyphile
Hamilton was very pro-government, and in modern terms would probably be termed a fascist. His support of a central bank directly makes it clear he wanted a government-run economy. If banking, one of the main parts of capitalism, is government controlled, how can that be called capitalism?
Periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
Thomas Jefferson
I believe it was in Federalist No. 12 that Hamilton spoke against the Confederacy because the states would keep tariffs too low? I know he HATED international trade like any good mercantilist.
Also, if I so recall correctly... he supported a central bank in order to make the debt a responsibility for all the States, "unifying" them under one national government. I don't think he necessarily understood the value of hard-money and real wealth, instead holding fallacious opinions of capital/money that a mercantilist would hold (he believed funding the government debt would create capital in the form of bonds, which it obviously wouldn't. The bonds are of no real value to anyone, its just said to be worth something by the government).
There's no such thing as a government bond, by standard definition of "bond".
You may also want to try A History of Money and Banking in the United States. The first chapter covers colonial era banking.
'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition
Because hamilton believed that all businesses should be permanantly indebted to a parasitic banking system that is designed to steal all of the peoples property and transfer it to the banking system.
Beefheart:I believe it was in Federalist No. 12 that Hamilton spoke against the Confederacy because the states would keep tariffs too low? I know he HATED international trade like any good mercantilist.
I thought it was because he felt that the tariffs would be too high? (hence the const. regulates interstate trade -to stop states from obstructing it). But he was a regulationist simply because he (if you read some parts of those 2 controversial reports he made) totally attacks the idea of free trade as a viable option to national wealth. He also (if you believe the neocon bio of him) got most of his formative economic ideas while reading financial treatises by government (aka mercantilist) advisors. From the same bio, it does speak of him as being for free trade, but only as long as america had its own industries first.
Basically he was a modern day republican.
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