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V. N. Alexander's avatar

Thanks Daniel for digging up all these details and narrating them in a way that is truly entertaining. Now, am I to understand (I believe I had it wrong all these years) is that the protest was not against taxes/tariffs per se, but protectionism, the unfair tax/tariff on a product from a country that country meant to favor? If all incoming tea had been taxed at the same (reasonable) rate, would the Sons of Liberty have protested? Did they want to buy their tea from a company other than East India (the Amazon of today)? Is the same problem going on today, when the government picks those companies it want to succeed?

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Daniel Donnelly - Libertarian's avatar

Correct. This subtlety is lost in narration, but the greater affront to the colonial Americans was not that they were taxed, but that their British competitors (and thus "outsiders") were exempted.

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V. N. Alexander's avatar

I wish the framers of the Constitution had thought to include the idea that tariffs and taxes should only be used to collect necessary minimum revenue and not to be used to manipulate markets and control the economy. Because government sucks at that.

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