Dimensionally Barrett

Source: The Nation As a dumb kid, I didn’t vote for Carter. I thought the idea of continuity was somehow important to maintaining stability in the U.S., despite how much I disliked Ford and his pardoning of one of the greatest crooks to hold office. I didn’t have much to on regarding Carter; he was  presented as the nice guy peanut farmer governor of Georgia and of whom I’d read nothing that mattered.  However, if I had, I might have been blown away. He was an anti-segregationist, he provided equal state aid to schools regardless of rich or poor or rural or urban; he set up community centers for mentally disabled children, and increased educational opportunities for convicts. He had little time for the “professional politicians” and made appointments based on merit. He was, I think, the first Georgia governor to add Black state employees and apparently, really pissed off the KKK by installing portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lucy Craft Laney, and Henry McNeal Turner....

Before we get along any further, let’s clarify what a tariff is.  From the Council on Foreign Relations; “Tariffs are a form of tax applied on imports from other countries. Economists say the costs are largely passed on to consumers Countries have used them to protect domestic industries, such as agriculture and renewable energy, as well as to retaliate against other states’ unfair trade practices.”(1) There is a third paragraph that I want to come back to but before I do, a little history lesson is in order.  Tariffs go back to, at least, Athenian Greece. The port of Piraeus imposed tariffs on grained other goods via a levy of two percent, to raise taxes for Athens. There were also restrictions on money landing and grain transport was only allowed through the port of Piraeus. This is, I think, the earliest example, and it’s less about national protectionism as tariffs would commonly be used for than as a way to increase revenues regionally. Athens was a city state, as opposed...