Why the income tax is worth celebrating

Washington Post ^ | February 17, 2013 | Molly Michelmore

[tom h]

The federal income tax celebrates its 100th birthday this month. With so few fans of the tax in and outside Washington, few are likely to celebrate.

But maybe we should.

The income tax was once quite popular ...

After the Civil War, the federal government relied on a combination of consumption taxes and high tariffs to raise revenue. Both bore most heavily on regular people while doing little to tap the fortunes of the Gilded Age’s robber barons.

Popular hostility toward these moneyed interests helps explain the initial popularity of the income tax ...

At their 1896 convention, Democrats endorsed such a tax ...

Added to the Constitution in February 1913, the 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes on incomes.” ...

At first affecting very few, the tax was temporarily expanded in 1916 to offset the costs of World War I ...

The government’s insistence that the “real authors” of the new tax burden lived in Berlin and Tokyo ...

[tom h]

The hubris and disingenuousness of these lefties is truly amazing. Writing that tax rates were "temporarily expanded" to pay for wars, and that our enemies in WWII were the real authors of higher tax rates, is pathetic.

To wit -- income taxes were unconstitutional until the 16th Amendment. Once the amendment passed the states, it took liberals only three years to raise the top rate to 80%. Yes, 100 years ago liberals were already trying to massively redistribute income and they wasted no time before going to outrageous lengths to do so. Rates didn't come down at the end of WWI; they came down when Republicans took back the Congress and the White House.

In fact, over time, every time tax rates rose to outrageous levels, it was when Democrats were in office.

The only Democrat to lower rates was JFK, who knew better than to claim that 90% top marginal rates were good for the economy.

The below chart tracks income tax rates over time.

And this sweet little WaPo author, a "Gender and Equity Studies" professor at Washington and Lee University, forgot to mention that.

Yup. She looks just like a gender and equity studies expert should look like.

[sr4402]

Progressives and the Progressive Media LOVE HIGHER TAXES. We, the people, HATE HIGHER TAXES.

Maybe this is why the Media is shrinking so fast.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

I can describe the defendant in three woids, yo honah:

She Ugly Bich.

[Agamemnon]

Did “she” remember to shave this morning?

[unixfox]

Our Founding Fathers would have shot the bastards who came up with the income tax.

And rightly so.

[mgist]

What a coincidence, the Washington Post and the New York Times both happen to have front page headlines celebrating higher taxes this morning. Can you say full fledged PRO-PA-GANDA boys and girls?

[ClearCase_guy]

At their 1896 convention, Democrats endorsed such a tax as the best way to ensure that the “burdens of taxation” be “equally and impartially laid” so that “wealth may bear its due proportion of the expenses of Government.” By 1908, both parties supported a national income tax.

If politicians really wanted the wealthy to shoulder their portion, then we would have a wealth tax. But we don't. The wealthy are doing just fine -- they have their land, their homes, their businesses. That stuff is not part of the discussion. The income tax? Wage earners pay that. People trying to get ahead pay that. The income tax helps to keep them in their place, and helps to protect the wealthy from uppity folks.

[Theophilus]

The 16th Amendment is a particularly egregious violation of the 13th Amendment.

[txrefugee]

Molly, you ignorant slut. When the Sixteenth Amendment was passed, the lying Congress promised it would never exceed 3% of one’s income and would be paid only by the rich. What happened to that promise? Like every law ever passed by this greedy, power-mad government, it was only the beginning of servitude for average Americans, who now have to fork over 30% to the government and live from paycheck-to-paycheck to support their families.

The Founders would be utterly ashamed of we, the sheeple.

[CodeToad]

She looks retarded. Typical liberal.

[Little Ray]

If you want more of something you subsidize it.
If you want less of something you tax it.

We subsidize sloth, bastardy, and incompetence.
We tax productivity.

What is wrong with this picture?

[central_va]

Here is a tough one: which amendment was/is more destructive, the 16th or the 17th?

[fabian]

It is illegal and not properly passed as exposed by Red Beckman years ago. How dare they make tax collectors out of employers all over the nation. Take away the income tax and we will have prosperity like we have not had for some time.

[central_va]

The Free Republic Free Traders LOVE the 16th amendment because it replaced the systems of trade tariffs and opened the door for off shoring and gloBULLism.

[SkyDancer]

Interesting article on the US tax system: http://www.policyalmanac.org/economic/archive/tax_history.shtml

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Since the beginning there has never been a satisfactory means of paying for the national government. However, because of progressivism, we not only have a bad means of national taxation, but one that strips us of our individual rights and liberties.

To explain, the founding fathers were apprehensive, at best, about democracy as such. They wanted some democracy, but they did not want it to get out of control, like in later did in France. So the people elected the representatives of the House, “The People’s House”; the states appointed Senators; and the electoral college elected the President, who would then appoint justices to the Supreme Court, once they were affirmed by the senate (and thus the states).

Their mechanism of organization of the government was based on balances between groups of people with somewhat different prerogatives, that would moderate each other and try to stop bad ideas from taking wing.

In this idea, the citizenry were citizens of their individual states first, and then citizens of the US. As such, the national government could not “interfere” with the citizens of a state unless the state allowed them to do so. Even the military draft was a state activity.

But the progressives fouled this up royally.

The 16th Amendment created the Income Tax, which meant that, with the exception of Lincoln’s war Income Tax, for the first time, the national government could involve itself in the personal lives of its citizens, without their permission.

Sooner rather than later this would create a conflict with the states, who would eventually use their senators to stand in the way of this tax. So just three years later, the 17th Amendment, using the false promise of “greater democracy”, made senators directly elected.

This both stripped the states of their power to influence the national government, and took away the power of the states to protect their citizens from national government tyrannies directly in their lives. Since then, the people have been victimized by increasingly intrusive national bureaucrats into their private lives.

And these tyrannies always grow, and have never been limited in any real way.

[massgopguy]

Philander Knox, burn in Hell.

[Resolute Conservative]

I rank the 17th as more of an evil than the 16th. Both need to go but the 17th needs to go first.

[DManA]

It’s not necessarily the income tax that’s the problem; it’s the PROGRESSIVE income tax.

Also the problem is that they shred and waste most of the income tax revenue, or even spend it AGAINST our interests.

[Skepolitic]

The original 1040 had a “specific exemption” of $4000.

At the time, $4000 was the equivalent of about 200 ounces of gold, which today is valued around $300,000.

The rate of taxation was 1%

In other words, a 1% tax on people that the Obamatons now call “millionaires” was popular in the early the 20th century.

Who would have thought it? Envy has always been a very powerful and destructive human sentiment. That’s why it’s forbidden by the 10th Commandment.