Lessons
from Colonial America
For all the
profound changes in Economic Policy that have taken place in the centuries
after the establishment of the thirteen colonies and their independence, one
must regularly revisit history through the lens of Economics to understand what
has worked and what hasn’t.
Since the
inception of any economic structure in the British North American Colonies, it
became apparent each region would inevitably specialize in the production of certain
goods. Through the years immediately following the first settlements –as population
nearly doubled every 25 years-, New England emerged as a shipbuilding prowess,
the Carolinas and Virginia gave a completely new center to economic activity
around Tobacco, and the colonies around New York provided a vital commercial supply
of furs, among others. It would be this structure of state-specialization that
assured America would have the necessary capacity to grow in population and
economic output.
Since
President Barack Obama took his oath of office in January 2009, he –and his
Democratic collaborators in State Legislatures and in Congress- have made
countless efforts to eradicate the above-explained concept of Economic Federalism
and instead transform it into a Presidential autocracy. The series of lawless
acts signed by President Obama disguised as Executive Acts have seriously
crippled the notion of state autonomy, his socialist-based Education and
Healthcare projects have sought to unify America’s socio-economic structure around
an all-mighty nanny state; even more worrying, his cronyism has focused (yet
failed) on subjugating states financially to the will of the Federal Government
through subsidies and entitlements.
It is surely
the abandonment of this federalist system our founders envisioned that has
provided us with an economically weakened America and a distorted democracy. It
is perhaps time for us to look back to Colonial America and take note, for
their legacy of state economic and social autonomy might be the only key to our
salvation. It is necessary for our next leaders to understand the importance of
limiting the scope of the Federal Government, for its intromission only
guarantees the inevitable failure of those states that surrender to its
bribery.
“It is not
by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution,
that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided
into states, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what
concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant
authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of
what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards,
to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by
its individual proprietor… It is by this partition of cares, descending in
gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be
best managed for the good and prosperity of all”. – Thomas Jefferson
