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If you don't consider the Native Americans human beings , perhaps.
IMO you are confusing using military force to wrest away natural resources with actual innovation.
And the Revolutionary War was prompted by the Crown giving the East India Company (which they had a vested interest in) a competitive advantage over the colonists.
This is why the Tea Party folks are so funny, they have the meaning of the actual Boston Tea Party 180 degrees backwards, it was a blow against corporate welfare.
Wealth in our time has taken on an almost surreal quality due to electronic trading, not to mention the consolidation of the banking industry and repealing Glass-Steagall. Remains to be seen if the current crop in DC have the stones to actually address the root problems.
I don't know what you're trying to say about Native Americans. I think it's clear in context that I'm talking about the colonial society that the Founders of the US came from. Contemporary Native American societies were more or less distinct from the society of British North America.
I also don't get what you're saying about the Tea Party movemnet. As I understand it, one of their main issues is opposition to corporate welfare, so it's actually right in line with your interpretation of the Boston Tea Party.
Incidentally, 17th and 18th Century chartered companies like the East India Company were more analogous to GSEs than regular business corporations in our time, so in that sense, the Tea Party is quite right to compare it's opposition to the Fannie and Freddie bailouts to protests over the British government favoring EIC.
The Boston Tea Party may have been a blow against government sponsored monopoly, but it's a stretch to say it was about corporate welfare. Strictly speaking, what with the Boston Tea Party was that Parliament (not the Crown) got rid of a regulation prohibiting EIC from selling directly to colonial merchants. EIC had previously only been allowed to sell only to merchants in Great Britain, who then resold to the colonial importers at a substantial mark up. The colonists responded by buying smuggled tea, which was much cheaper. When the British middlemen were cut out of the equation, EIC was able to sell its tea for a lower price than smuggled tea, which threatened to put colonial smugglers out of business, along with with a lot of importers who had been customers of the British middlemen.
I also don't get what you're saying about the Tea Party movemnet. As I understand it, one of their main issues is opposition to corporate welfare, so it's actually right in line with your interpretation of the Boston Tea Party.
I was going to mention that. Libertarian-types are as outraged at the bailouts/corporate welfare as they are Obamacare; perhaps moreso.
I was going to mention that. Libertarian-types are as outraged at the bailouts/corporate welfare as they are Obamacare; perhaps moreso.
One could say that a lot of Obamacare is corporate welfare. The health insurance industry can hope for 8 or 9 million young and healthy (read: very profitable) new customers by virtue of the individual mandate, and I've heard that Big Pharma makes out like a bandit as well.
I was going to mention that. Libertarian-types are as outraged at the bailouts/corporate welfare as they are Obamacare; perhaps moreso.
Sure, there's some good parts of Obamacare but you say that like the two are very different things... However, Tea Partiers aren't generally too opposed to corporate welfare.
I don't know what you're trying to say about Native Americans. I think it's clear in context that I'm talking about the colonial society that the Founders of the US came from. Contemporary Native American societies were more or less distinct from the society of British North America.
I also don't get what you're saying about the Tea Party movemnet. As I understand it, one of their main issues is opposition to corporate welfare, so it's actually right in line with your interpretation of the Boston Tea Party.
Incidentally, 17th and 18th Century chartered companies like the East India Company were more analogous to GSEs than regular business corporations in our time, so in that sense, the Tea Party is quite right to compare it's opposition to the Fannie and Freddie bailouts to protests over the British government favoring EIC.
The Boston Tea Party may have been a blow against government sponsored monopoly, but it's a stretch to say it was about corporate welfare. Strictly speaking, what with the Boston Tea Party was that Parliament (not the Crown) got rid of a regulation prohibiting EIC from selling directly to colonial merchants. EIC had previously only been allowed to sell only to merchants in Great Britain, who then resold to the colonial importers at a substantial mark up. The colonists responded by buying smuggled tea, which was much cheaper. When the British middlemen were cut out of the equation, EIC was able to sell its tea for a lower price than smuggled tea, which threatened to put colonial smugglers out of business, along with with a lot of importers who had been customers of the British middlemen.
It's clear you don't understand quite a bit if you don't understand that how wealth has been accumulated here in the Americas has been by taking it away from the Native Americans. We broke treaties, contracts, and basically just took their land and resources and reallocated it to settlers - and corporations like the railroads, which got huge tracts of land.
As for your creative interpretation of the Crown's relationship to the East India Co., learn something:
Conventional wisdom has it that the 1773 Tea Act - a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. In reality, however, the Tea Act gave the world's largest transnational corporation - The East India Company - full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.
The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.
This infuriated the independence-minded American colonists, who were wholly unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the world's largest multinational corporation, The East India Company. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre-Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter. (Thus, the cry of 'no taxation without representation!') Even in the official British version of the history, the 1773 Tea Act was a 'legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America' with a goal of helping the East India Company quickly 'sell 17 million pounds of tea stored in England''
You do understand that the very first settlements were for-profit charters set up by the Crown, right?
How you do make money selling something that belongs to someone else without either swindling them and/or forcibly taking it?
Sure, there's some good parts of Obamacare but you say that like the two are very different things... However, Tea Partiers aren't generally too opposed to corporate welfare.
Huh? I think they're opposed to government in general. They absolutely hated the bailouts.
Perhaps you are using "corporate welfare" to mean lower businesses taxes.
Huh? I think they're opposed to government in general. They absolutely hated the bailouts.
Perhaps you are using "corporate welfare" to mean lower businesses taxes.
Then why did this movement get formed during the Obama administration? They were silent when Bush used 9-11 as an excuse to get rid of civil liberties and go to war..
It's clear you don't understand quite a bit if you don't understand that how wealth has been accumulated here in the Americas has been by taking it away from the Native Americans. We broke treaties, contracts, and basically just took their land and resources and reallocated it to settlers - and corporations like the railroads, which got huge tracts of land.
As for your creative interpretation of the Crown's relationship to the East India Co., learn something:
Conventional wisdom has it that the 1773 Tea Act - a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. In reality, however, the Tea Act gave the world's largest transnational corporation - The East India Company - full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.
The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.
This infuriated the independence-minded American colonists, who were wholly unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the world's largest multinational corporation, The East India Company. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre-Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter. (Thus, the cry of 'no taxation without representation!') Even in the official British version of the history, the 1773 Tea Act was a 'legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America' with a goal of helping the East India Company quickly 'sell 17 million pounds of tea stored in England''
You do understand that the very first settlements were for-profit charters set up by the Crown, right?
How you do make money selling something that belongs to someone else without either swindling them and/or forcibly taking it?
Yes, I understand that that the companies that initiated colonization in North America were for-profit enterprises. What gives the impression that I don't? If it's that I characterized them as being analogous to GSEs, remember that Fannie Mae is for-profit company, too.
I really don't understand what Native Americans have to do with anything I said, which was that the American Founders lived in a society in which wealth was more concentrated than in our time. If you veered off in another direction at some point, I must have missed your point.
On Hartmann: because EIC "held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America." Isn't that what I said? Hartmann mentions some different details than I did, but the only thing he seems to disagree with me on is relative weight of the disparate tax treatment of the colonial imports as far as the Son's of Liberty's motivations went for the BTP.
Huh? I think they're opposed to government in general. They absolutely hated the bailouts.
Perhaps you are using "corporate welfare" to mean lower businesses taxes.
No no, it's not an opposition to government in general, but they are opposed to government acting like Big Brother, performing unconstitutional acts, and especially are in opposition of government waste. They believe in a lean government, especially fiscally. It has a big libertarian streak in it really. Honestly, this isn't the thread to debate this, but just thought I'd clarify.
No no, it's not an opposition to government in general, but they are opposed to government acting like Big Brother, performing unconstitutional acts, and especially are in opposition of government waste. They believe in a lean government, especially fiscally. It has a big libertarian streak in it really. Honestly, this isn't the thread to debate this, but just thought I'd clarify.
Well, I meant "government growth" etc. The larger political debate is about how involved the government should be in our lives, how much we should all be taxed in order to maintain gov. programs etc.
I realize most tea partiers believe there should be "a government." They just want it kept, yes, I suppose "lean" is a generous word. My impression is they'd like to roll it back to have an absolute minimal amount of functions to what seems to me to be a very unrealistic degree, but to each their own.
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