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Originally Posted by loquitur
the purpose of an army is to fight wars. It has other effects as a result, but that's its purpose.
Taxes pay for government. Some people decided to extend the functions of government, so taxes followed that too. But that doesn't change the basic function of taxes. We can argue about whether govt should be in the redistribution business, and that would be a worthwhile discussion, but you're getting hung up on unnecessary overconceptualization. The purpose of taxes is to pay for the government to operate.
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C'mon loquitur,
you post like someone in deep denial, or under the spell of Ayn Rand. US income and inheritance taxes are a direct response to the excesses of a few, intended as reform to benefit the many.
I've asked repeatedly, if 70 percent of total US wealth in the hands of just ten percent of us is not a problem, what greater percentage would be a problem? What mechanism, aside from government, is in a position, and authorized by the majority to lessen the extreme concentration of wealth?
We never even get to the second question, do we? Extreme concentration of wealth is "never a problem". Unchecked, it inevitably provokes violence, after it breaks the self esteem, and then the hope of the vast majority. But that's a problem for another day, another generation, like....the $9.3 trillion federal treasury debt....correct?
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"When I say 'capitalism', I mean a full, pure uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism--<h3>with a separation of state and economics</h3>, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church." --Ayn Rand: "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness
"If one wishes to advocate a free society--that is capitalism--one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights, <h3>one must realize that capitalism is the only system that can uphold and protect them."</h3> --Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness
"Those who advocate laissez-faire capitalism are the only advocates of man's rights." --Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness
"Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it." --Ayn Rand.
"A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; <h3>various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start."</h3> --Ayn Rand
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"I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force." --Thomas Jefferson to Comte Diodati, 1789.
"I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.
"No other depositories of power [but the people themselves] have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.
"The mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.
"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.
"Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.
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http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=c...html&Itemid=27
TO WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD
j. mss.
Monticello, June 20, 1816
Dear Sir,
....No earthly consideration could induce my consent to contract such a debt as England has by her wars for commerce, to reduce our citizens by taxes to such wretchedness, as that laboring sixteen of the twenty-four hours, they are still unable to afford themselves bread, or barely to earn as much oatmeal or potatoes as will keep soul and body together. <h3>And all this to feed the avidity of a few millionary merchants, and to keep up one thousand ships of war for the protection of their commercial speculations.</h3> I returned from Europe after our government had got under way, and had adopted from the British code the law of draw-backs. I early saw its effects in the jealousies and vexations of Britain; and that, retaining it, we must become like her an essentially warring nation, and meet, in the end, the catastrophe impending over her. No one can doubt that this alone produced the orders of council, the depredations which preceded, and the war which followed them. Had we carried but our own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no nation would have troubled us. Our commercial dashers, then, have already cost us so many thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than their persons and all their commerce were worth. When war was declared, and especially after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with the enemy waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress to avail us of the happy opportunity of repealing the draw-back; and I do rejoice to find that you are in that sentiment. You are young, and may be in the way of bringing it into effect. Perhaps time, even yet, and change of tone, (for there are symptoms of that in Massachusetts,) may not have obliterated altogether the sense of our late feelings and sufferings; may not have induced oblivion of the friends we have lost, the depredations and conflagrations we have suffered, and the debts we have incurred, and have to labor for through the lives of the present generation.....
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Who was correct, loquitur? Ayn Rand. born in Russia, and in adulthood, believing that capitalism is the "only protector of rights", and that the government was "distorting capitalism", or was Jefferson, believing the only authority and protector of rights to be "the people"?
"The people" are not seperate of a government "by and for them", and an economic "system" should be as the people deem it to be, not Ayn Rand's
"with a separation of state and economics".
When an accused is charged with a crime, the court conducts a hearing to determine if there is justification to hold in custody or to grant bail to the defendant. The judge asks for the opinion of a representative of "the people", from the DA's office present in the courtroom.
The economic system and the distribution of money and wealth are as unfettered or regulated as "the people", through their vote and input given to their representatives in the legislature, determine that they should be.
It is an orderly, slow, and deliberative process, and it's a hell of a lot better than violent disruption to achieve similar ends, isn't it?
If you don't admit that there is a problem, or if you do, but don't have a plan that is fairer and more democratic than what I've described to deal with it, it's either government attempt redistribution of wealth via progressive taxation and inheritance tax on the top tier....or ???????????
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http://www.quotedb.com/speeches/man-with-the-muck-rake
The Man with the Muck Rake
By Theodore Roosevelt
April 15th, 1906
Over a century ago Washington laid the corner stone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the government.
This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the national government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth in complex interests.....
<h3>.....At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest—social, political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequality of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the individual and the nation.</h3>
So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life.
If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appetite against appetite, of a contest between the brutal greed of the “have nots” and the brutal greed of the “haves,” then it has no significance for good, but only for evil. If it seeks to establish a line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto, which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic.
We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime.
It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion.
It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well won and fortunes ill won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law honesty. Of course, no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.
As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual—a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax of course, to be imposed by the national and not the state government. <h3>Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.</h3> Again, the national government must in some form exercise supervision over corporations engaged in interstate business—and all large corporations engaged in interstate business—whether by license or otherwise, so as to permit us to deal with the far reaching evils of overcapitalization.....
<h3>...The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement.</h3> But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.
On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire existing order, the men who act crookedly, whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzle headedness, the men who preach destruction without proposing any substitute for what they intend to destroy, or who propose a substitute which would be far worse than the existing evils—all these men are the most dangerous opponents of real reform....
...More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship.
Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.....
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http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/sta...union/119.html
Theodore Roosevelt (December 3, 1907)
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
....No small part of the trouble that we have comes from carrying to an extreme the national virtue of self-reliance, of independence in initiative and action. It is wise to conserve this virtue and to provide for its fullest exercise, compatible with seeing that liberty does not become a liberty to wrong others....
....This represents an approximation between income and outgo which it would be hard to improve. The satisfactory working of the present tariff law has been chiefly responsible for this excellent showing. Nevertheless, there is an evident and constantly growing feeling among our people that the time is rapidly approaching when our system of revenue legislation must be revised.
This country is definitely committed to the protective system and any effort to uproot it could not but cause widespread industrial disaster. In other words, the principle of the present tariff law could not with wisdom be changed. But in a country of such phenomenal growth as ours it is probably well that every dozen years or so the tariff laws should be carefully scrutinized so as to see that no excessive or improper benefits are conferred thereby, that proper revenue is provided, and that our foreign trade is encouraged. There must always be as a minimum a tariff which will not only allow for the collection of an ample revenue but which will at least make good the difference in cost of production here and abroad; that is, the difference in the labor cost here and abroad, for the well-being of the wage-worker must ever be a cardinal point of American policy. The question should be approached purely from a business standpoint; both the time and the manner of the change being such as to arouse the minimum of agitation and disturbance in the business world, and to give the least play for selfish and factional motives. The sole consideration should be to see that the sum total of changes represents the public good. This means that the subject can not with wisdom be dealt with in the year preceding a Presidential election, because as a matter of fact experience has conclusively shown that at such a time it is impossible to get men to treat it from the standpoint of the public good. In my judgment the wise time to deal with the matter is immediately after such election.
When our tax laws are revised the question of an income tax and an inheritance tax should receive the careful attention of our legislators. In my judgment both of these taxes should be part of our system of Federal taxation. I speak diffidently about the income tax because one scheme for an income tax was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; while in addition it is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working, and great care would have to be exercised to see that it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded it would, of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man. Nevertheless, a graduated income tax of the proper type would be a desirable feature of Federal taxation, and it is to be hoped that one may be devised which the Supreme Court will declare constitutional. The inheritance tax, however, is both a far better method of taxation, and far more important for the purpose of having the fortunes of the country bear in proportion to their increase in size a corresponding increase and burden of taxation. The Government has the absolute right to decide as to the terms upon which a man shall receive a bequest or devise from another, and this point in the devolution of property is especially appropriate for the imposition of a tax. Laws imposing such taxes have repeatedly been placed upon the National statute books and as repeatedly declared constitutional by the courts; and these laws contained the progressive principle, that is, after a certain amount is reached the bequest or gift, in life or death, is increasingly burdened and the rate of taxation is increased in proportion to the remoteness of blood of the man receiving the bequest. These principles are recognized already in the leading civilized nations of the world. In Great Britain all the estates worth $5,000 or less are practically exempt from death duties, while the increase is such that when an estate exceeds five millions of dollars in value and passes to a distant kinsman or stranger in blood the Government receives all told an amount equivalent to nearly a fifth of the whole estate. In France so much of an inheritance as exceeds $10,000,000 pays over a fifth to the State if it passes to a distant relative. The German law is especially interesting to us because it makes the inheritance tax an imperial measure while allotting to the individual States of the Empire a portion of the proceeds and permitting them to impose taxes in addition to those imposed by the Imperial Government. Small inheritances are exempt, but the tax is so sharply progressive that when the inheritance is still not very large, provided it is not an agricultural or a forest land, it is taxed at the rate of 25 per cent if it goes to distant relatives. There is no reason why in the United States the National Government should not impose inheritance taxes in addition to those imposed by the States, and when we last had an inheritance tax about one-half of the States levied such taxes concurrently with the National Government, making a combined maximum rate, in some cases as high as 25 per cent. The French law has one feature which is to be heartily commended. The progressive principle is so applied that each higher rate is imposed only on the excess above the amount subject to the next lower rate; so that each increase of rate will apply only to a certain amount above a certain maximum. The tax should if possible be made to bear more heavily upon those residing without the country than within it. A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country--a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves. But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories. Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.
A few years ago there was loud complaint that the law could not be invoked against wealthy offenders. There is no such complaint now. The course of the Department of Justice during the last few years has been such as to make it evident that no man stands above the law, that no corporation is so wealthy that it can not be held to account. The Department of Justice has been as prompt to proceed against the wealthiest malefactor whose crime was one of greed and cunning as to proceed against the agitator who incites to brutal violence. Everything that can be done under the existing law, and with the existing state of public opinion, which so profoundly influences both the courts and juries, has been done. But the laws themselves need strengthening in more than one important point; they should be made more definite, so that no honest man can be led unwittingly to break them, and so that the real wrongdoer can be readily punished.
Moreover, there must be the public opinion back of the laws or the laws themselves will be of no avail. At present, while the average juryman undoubtedly wishes to see trusts broken up, and is quite ready to fine the corporation itself, he is very reluctant to find the facts proven beyond a reasonable doubt when it comes to sending to jail a member of the business community for indulging in practices which are profoundly unhealthy, but which, unfortunately, the business community has grown to recognize as well-nigh normal. Both the present condition of the law and the present temper of juries render it a task of extreme difficulty to get at the real wrongdoer in any such case, especially by imprisonment. Yet it is from every standpoint far preferable to punish the prime offender by imprisonment rather than to fine the corporation, with the attendant damage to stockholders.
The two great evils in the execution of our criminal laws to-day are sentimentality and technicality. For the latter the remedy must come from the hands of the legislatures, the courts, and the lawyers. The other must depend for its cure upon the gradual growth of a sound public opinion which shall insist that regard for the law and the demands of reason shall control all other influences and emotions in the jury box. Both of these evils must be removed or public discontent with the criminal law will continue......
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http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readin...b?OpenDocument
Full Text Published by Tax AnalystsTM
The income tax just turned 90, having become law on October 3, 1913, as part of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act.
....The law established a "normal" rate of 1 percent on both individual and corporate incomes. Lawmakers set the personal exemption at a lofty $3,000, leaving the vast majority of Americans completely exempt; according to historian Elliot Brownlee, only 2 percent of American households paid the tax during its early years.
The tax also included a graduated surtax. With rates ranging from 1 percent to 6 percent, it added a new, distinctly progressive element to the federal revenue system. Because most revenue still came from tariff duties and a handful of excise taxes, the income tax provided a symbolic counterweight to those regressive revenue tools.
16th AmendmentThe 1913 law provided a capstone to the vigorous 1909 debate over income taxes. <h3>In that year, Democrats and progressive Republicans had mustered considerable support for a new income tax. However, Republican leaders in both the House and Senate remained steadfastly opposed to the idea.</h3> Eager to forestall a party rebellion, Republican President William Howard Taft proposed a compromise: Congress would enact a modest corporate income tax as a substitute for broader income taxation. Also, lawmakers would submit to the states a constitutional amendment explicitly authorizing the federal government to impose an income tax. The amendment was designed to eliminate any lingering doubts growing out of the Supreme Court's 1895 Pollock decision about the constitutionality of an income tax.
Taft's plan succeeded -- perhaps too well, from the perspective of many conservatives. <h3>Ratification of the 16th Amendment proved relatively easy, and on February 25, 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox certified the amendment's adoption.</h3> With support from Taft's successor, Woodrow Wilson, lawmakers soon approved the 1913 income tax law, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue, as the IRS was then known, prepared the first Form 1040 soon after.
The income tax remained a very narrow tax until World War I, when revenue needs prompted lawmakers to modestly expand its breadth. Even then, it never reached far into the middle class. It would take another national crisis to finally transform the levy from a "class tax" to a "mass tax"; today's income tax was a product of World War II.....
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Last edited by host; 12-02-2007 at 06:39 PM..
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