I blurbed William Hogeland’s brand-new book that came out on Tuesday, May 28, book: The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money & Power in the American Founding...
Hogeland wrote a very sympathetic history of the Whiskey Rebellion which I've read. Many of the themes you mention here are in that book as well. But while those frontier settlers at that time deserve some sympathy, it's pretty hard to agree that we should prefer those who favored the extermination of Native Americans, used violent tactics in opposition to the whiskey tax, and had, well, unsophisticated notions of how an economy works over Hamilton or even Jefferson.
I am not qualified to comment, but based on what little I know, your point about recognizing how the economy works (or not) seems fair. I noticed Delong spotted that point at the very beginning of his comments on Hamilton. Hamilton helps explain why we are on average rich.
I thought Hogeland's book every bit as good as you say. Of course, I'm not qualified to comment on his use of the primary sources, but his book seems solid in its scholarship and story-telling, and is altogether consistent with another fine Hamilton biography, by the conservative historian Forrest McDonald (1979), which Hogeland cites in several places. Forrest McDonald, by the way, co-wrote a wonderful high school textbook on American History with Eugene Genovese ... and I'm messaging here to suggest to you, Brad, that you consider doing something in your field of Political Economy/History (or whatever you call it) ... perhaps a collaboration with Steve Teles, with whom you have been having such a nice exchange, just today, on the Political Science Department at Harvard. Cheers
Wait now. I ordered the book and it has arrived and I will start reading it tomorrow, as commanded. But now I have to finish it before I read your own stuff? Geez. A real Commissar of Sequencing.
I'm sure all Treasury Secretaries were intelligent. But Hamilton also had courage. He led a bayonet charge at Yorktown. It's hard for those of us sitting at a computer all day to comprehend exactly what that involves.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, (in) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
For most of my life I thought the (in) was in that sentence. Because clearly all men are not created equal. Some are smarter, some more industrious, some more athletic, etc. Men are only equal in having the same rights. But Jefferson left out the (in). IMO it's the (in) that clarifies in what ways all men are equal. But there is no (in) in the sentence. This omission leads to all kinds of problems and arguments about exactly how equal men are, and how equal they should be.
I will give Hamilton a pass on the use of tariffs for promoting development instead of only subsidies and infrastructure investments, because the personal income tax and the VAT had not yet been invented and import duties were in effect the only source of revenue for the subsidies and infrastructure investments plus (maybe) the US had or would come to have some monopoly power in setting international prices of tobacco, indigo and cotton and so the Lerner Theorem tax on exports was quasi-optimal.
I believe the differences between Hamilton's second best policies and Baden's tariffs on EV are evident enough.
I often wonder why Willliam Findley has not received a lot more attention than he has gotten. His 1786 attack on the Bank of North America was an astoundingly eloquent, prescient and precise attack on corporate power, as a kind of imperium in imperio. It's worth reading today. So was his hardshell Presbyterian attack on theocratic government. He was that rarest thing: a hard-headed and successful populist politician, coming from nowhere socially. (Am I also describing AOC?) He was also willing to adapt to the times--an enemy of banking in the 1780's, he became a supporter of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States.
Hogeland wrote a very sympathetic history of the Whiskey Rebellion which I've read. Many of the themes you mention here are in that book as well. But while those frontier settlers at that time deserve some sympathy, it's pretty hard to agree that we should prefer those who favored the extermination of Native Americans, used violent tactics in opposition to the whiskey tax, and had, well, unsophisticated notions of how an economy works over Hamilton or even Jefferson.
I am not qualified to comment, but based on what little I know, your point about recognizing how the economy works (or not) seems fair. I noticed Delong spotted that point at the very beginning of his comments on Hamilton. Hamilton helps explain why we are on average rich.
I thought Hogeland's book every bit as good as you say. Of course, I'm not qualified to comment on his use of the primary sources, but his book seems solid in its scholarship and story-telling, and is altogether consistent with another fine Hamilton biography, by the conservative historian Forrest McDonald (1979), which Hogeland cites in several places. Forrest McDonald, by the way, co-wrote a wonderful high school textbook on American History with Eugene Genovese ... and I'm messaging here to suggest to you, Brad, that you consider doing something in your field of Political Economy/History (or whatever you call it) ... perhaps a collaboration with Steve Teles, with whom you have been having such a nice exchange, just today, on the Political Science Department at Harvard. Cheers
Wait now. I ordered the book and it has arrived and I will start reading it tomorrow, as commanded. But now I have to finish it before I read your own stuff? Geez. A real Commissar of Sequencing.
I'm sure all Treasury Secretaries were intelligent. But Hamilton also had courage. He led a bayonet charge at Yorktown. It's hard for those of us sitting at a computer all day to comprehend exactly what that involves.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, (in) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
For most of my life I thought the (in) was in that sentence. Because clearly all men are not created equal. Some are smarter, some more industrious, some more athletic, etc. Men are only equal in having the same rights. But Jefferson left out the (in). IMO it's the (in) that clarifies in what ways all men are equal. But there is no (in) in the sentence. This omission leads to all kinds of problems and arguments about exactly how equal men are, and how equal they should be.
I will give Hamilton a pass on the use of tariffs for promoting development instead of only subsidies and infrastructure investments, because the personal income tax and the VAT had not yet been invented and import duties were in effect the only source of revenue for the subsidies and infrastructure investments plus (maybe) the US had or would come to have some monopoly power in setting international prices of tobacco, indigo and cotton and so the Lerner Theorem tax on exports was quasi-optimal.
I believe the differences between Hamilton's second best policies and Baden's tariffs on EV are evident enough.
I often wonder why Willliam Findley has not received a lot more attention than he has gotten. His 1786 attack on the Bank of North America was an astoundingly eloquent, prescient and precise attack on corporate power, as a kind of imperium in imperio. It's worth reading today. So was his hardshell Presbyterian attack on theocratic government. He was that rarest thing: a hard-headed and successful populist politician, coming from nowhere socially. (Am I also describing AOC?) He was also willing to adapt to the times--an enemy of banking in the 1780's, he became a supporter of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States.