Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Empire??????
Is America an empire? Lately many people would say yes. I disagree. Examine any empire Roman, British, Spanish, etc... there is a common denominator in all of these empires, they tax there subjects. We all know the story of the British colonies in America and the rebellion because of high taxes, but I digress. The US does not tax the countries we have defeated in battle Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Germany, Kuwait etc... Rather we send our tax dollars over there to help their country. I cannot find a single instance of empires sending tax dollars from the capital (Rome, London, etc) to the newly conquered land except to fund wars. We are sending billions of dollars to Iraq & Afghanistan to rebuild these countries, just like we sending billions to many countries that are less fortunate.
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America is not an Empire in the traditional or historical sense. That is, they are not a colonial empire that occupies another country and exacts "tributes" in the form of taxation.
However, I think the argument can be made that they are indeed an economic imperialist empire. In the modern world there is no need to occupy foreign countries and collect taxes. All you need to do is get a control over the economies of those countries and manipulate them to your own ends.
Sure we send our tax dollars there, but that is really an investment in "human capital". It doesn't hurt to have a military base or some other military presence near-by to protect your interests. You then overwork and underpay the people. Your return is much more than you could ever expect to collect from taxes, because you can take the fruits of the labor and turn around and sell them.
This is precisely why we are interested in the middle east. The whole Iraq, Afghanistan thing is all about protecting our oil, and making sure that someone else (Russia, China) doesn't get control of it.
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