France: Yet another nation turns against globalism: 80% see it as a job-killer

[pampango]

33. FDR did't fight higher tariffs because it was a republican thing, but because it was a BAD thing.

"And you really think that "strong Buy America programs for public works" is the limit of what Democrats support?"

Didn't say that, did I? I said: "Your poll shows only 91% of Democrats support a "strong Buy America programs for public works". That is support for a program that applies to public works funded by the government. The article does not claim that this support applies to everything that everyone buys."

The article you linked to made no claim that its findings of support for "strong Buy America programs for public works" proved that this was the "limit of what Democrats support" nor did it claim to prove that Democrats support a whole range of trade restrictions on everything that everyone buys. You may infer from that finding that Democrats must logically then support everything that you believe in. To prove that one would have to poll specifically about support for 'free trade' (NAFTA, WTO, etc.) or support for higher tariffs and other trade restrictions.

"... you completely misinterpret what's going on in France. Protectionism didn't start with the Far Right - it started across the board."

Link? Proof? Or is your statement of 'fact' supposed to be sufficient? Here are 12 far-right parties in Europe. If you look at their policies on trade and immigration you will see a close correlation to the views of the teabaggers and republican base on trade shown in the Pew poll and in any poll of teabagger attitudes on immigration. (They all want to build a wall literally or figuratively around their countries to keep 'them' and 'their' stuff out.) While you may trash that poll, it shows the same attitudes on the far-right in the US and in Europe.

OTOH, continued support for the EU (with its open borders and 'free trade' with each other) comes from the liberal end of the political spectrum (like the Socialists in France). Not surprising since "we are all in this together" and "build bridges, not walls" are not sentiments you hear expressed at tea party rallies or those of the National Front in France or any other European 'tea party-like' far-right group.

"Stop living in the past.

Stop looking at history and what has worked and not worked in the past? Just live in the moment and support policies that I 'really, really think will work' even though they have not in the past. During the 12 years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover (the first 10 years they had republican controlled congresses to do what they wanted) their high-tariff, restrictive immigration policies led to a spiraling of income inequality to a level which (at the time) were record levels.

I understand you desire to not 'live in the past' since the fact of what happened to the country during previous efforts to build 'walls' around the country to protect us from trade and immigration, do not provide much solace for the policies you promote.

'[]i... "but Republicans started that movement" ...

As you rightly point out the republican party of Lincoln was not the republican party of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Lincoln was anything but conservative. Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were anything but liberal. It would be more useful for me to post that conservatives started the movement. That is more accurate since long ago republicans used to be liberal.

The Hidden Progressive History of Income Tax

The income tax was the most popular economic justice movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. This truly grassroots movement forced politicians to act in order to stay in office, leading to the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913. That’s right, the income tax was so popular that the nation passed a constitutional amendment so that the right-wing Supreme Court couldn’t overturn it.

Everyday Americans hated the tax system of the Gilded Age. The federal government gathered taxes in two ways. First, it placed high tariff rates on imports. These import taxes protected American industries from competition. This allowed companies to charge high prices on products that the working class needed to survive while also protecting the monopolies that controlled their everyday lives. Second, the government had high excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, two products used heavily by the American working class.

These forms of indirect taxes meant that almost the entirety of federal tax revenue came from the poor while the rich paid virtually nothing. This spawned enormous outrage.

The income tax became such an overwhelming political movement during the 1890s that Congress, despite so many members' close relationship with the plutocracy, passed an income tax law that would have forced the rich to begin paying income taxes for the first time since 1870. ... Corporations immediately organized against this. In a strategy we can recognize today, the Chamber of Commerce distorted the bill’s purpose, telling the public that the income tax would drive them into poverty, even though the bill did not affect working-class people.

But the Supreme Court in 1895 declared the federal income tax unconstitutional in the case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Company. Yet the income tax movement continued, now with the goal of a constitutional amendment to overcome a hostile Court. Over the next 15 years, a variety of reform movements, including farmers, organized labor, and, increasingly, middle-class reformers known as Progressives, pushed for the income tax to alleviate America’s stubborn inequality and to provide the government more money in order to function as modern 20th-century state. Despite continued corporate opposition, Congress presented a constitutional amendment to the states in 1909, which finally achieved ratification in 1913 as the 16th Amendment. Over the next century, income taxes played an enormous role in leveling the national playing field and creating the middle class.

Progressives need to reclaim income tax rates as an organizing issue. We need to press for an aggressive tax increase on the wealthy while lowering income taxes for those who can’t afford to pay them. We should also call for vigorous prosecution of tax cheats, the closing of tax loopholes, and a series of government programs directly paid for by the income taxes from the wealthy. This is a tall order in the face of the current anti-tax mentality. But until we reclaim the mantle of progressive taxation, we won’t have access to a primary tool to create a more just and equitable society.

http://www.thenation.com/slideshow/162731/slide-show-europes-far-right-resurgence#

I know what you are going to say. "More living in the past! So what if progressives worked to reduce tariffs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, because they viewed them as regressive taxes on the working class! So what if corporations (and the Chamber) lobbied relentlessly to protect high tariffs and the working class hated them! So what if FDR opposed high tariffs just as progressives had a few decades earlier!

Anyway, I think you can see why republicans went back to a policy of high tariffs as soon as they got back into office in 1921. Progressives hated them!

None of that matters. It's different now, right? History is irrelevant, right? What conservatives supported in the past; what produced spiraling inequality in the past; what was opposed by progressives in the past (and is still opposed by them in Europe today) - it will work now! Things are different now!