They are levied upon the imported commodity, mainly, if not solely, for the purpose of enabling the producers of competing home commodities to extort from consumers a higher price than the home commodities would bring in free and open market.
He claims that taxes on imports primarily serve to inflate prices for domestic producers.
Share
More from Lysander Spooner
They do not carry their heads high, above all other men, and demand our reverence and admiration, as statesmen, patriots, and benefactors.
They do not tell us that all liberty and order would be destroyed, that society itself would go to pieces, and man go back to barbarism, if it were not for the care, and supervision, and protection, they lavish upon us.
They neither ask, nor expect, any mercy, if they should ever fall into the hands of honest men.
They acknowledge it to be our unquestioned right and duty to kill them, if we can; that they expect nothing else, than that we will kill them, if we can; and that we are only fools and cowards, if we do not kill them, by any and every…