Posted on 09/21/2002 11:39:06 AM PDT by TLBSHOW
This was my point on the excise tax (a sales tax) having an automatic limit. When the people have to actually pay a tax on their purchases (as opposed to having an automatic deduction from their paychecks) they feel the tax. It is painful. If the tax rate gets too high, they will either not pay it or otherwise do something about it. The socialists will have a much more difficult time paying for their excesses and their programs will not be allowed.
"We are all the more reconciled to the tax on importations, because it falls exclusively on the rich, and with the equal partition of intestate's estates, constitutes the best agrarian law. In fact, the poor man in this country who uses nothing but what is made within his own farm or family, or within the United States, pays not a farthing of tax to the General Government, but on his salt; and should we go into that manufacture as we ought to do, he will pay not one cent."
--Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1811. ME 13:39
With you all the way on this one Jim.
The income tax punishes labor, production, wealth and capital. The sales tax removes those penalties. The income tax is forced. The sales tax is controlled by the individual. If the individual wants to save, he can invest his 100% tax free dollars to gain maximum earnings and those earnings will not be taxed until and unless he spends them.
The income tax is an automatic forced deduction and allows politicians to raise the rates or change the rules almost at will. It allows granting special favors to special interest groups. It's unfair, uneven and arbitrary.
The income tax gives the government power over people. They have to enforce the tax at gun point. The income tax violates our constitutional rights to privacy and due process. The government has no business having access to our earnings or financial records. They also have no business seizing the assets of individuals whom they suspect are not in compliance. With the sales tax, they will be deprived of that access. No individual audits necessary. No IRS gestapo squads necessary.
Thanks for the suggestion. Balint Vazsonyi is an interesting fellow -- one of my favorite political commentators, in fact. His background makes him such a great witness for the conservative cause (reared under the communist system).
The Leftists (sorry -- "socialists") must loathe his "mean-sprited" ideology.
Well, that includes 100% of the Democrats. Vote them out!
Elitist Hamiltonian propaganda.
Why did Hamilton favor the excise tax? For one thing, these westerners, mostly farmers, were considered backward and a little slow-witted, so it was assumed that one could tax them with impunity.
The sales tax is inherently opressively regressive.
That is because those who are less affluent must devote a greater proportion of their resources simply to obtain the necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, medicines.
I cannot condone a tax policy designed to place the greatest burden on less afluent Americans while allowing only the most wealthy the opportunity to increase their holdings completely unfettered.
This is the shame of Alexander Hamilton: that he was so willing to send forth federal troops to oppress ordinary Americans for the enrichment of the wealthy mercantile class. In his great visionary wisdom, Jefferson rejected economic subservience to European trade, instituted tariffs, balanced the budget, and initiated our great westward expansion from which ALL could prosper from the bounty of our own hard work and natural resources.
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
--Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:69
"The ONLY evil people in government today are those who circumvent the Constitution."Maybe not "circumventing", but Republicans are equally capable of violating the Constitution. I'll say they're somewhat less inclined (and maybe more inept at the task than their Democratic brethren).Well, that includes 100% of the Democrats. Vote them out!
Not 100% of the Democrats are evil and corrupt. Some of them - and there are a few, mostly at the local level - are sincerely following their own principles... and they are more often than not fiscally and philosophically conservative. Why don't they switch to Republican, and why are they Democratic to begin with? Mostly they're Democrat out of tradition, and never saw why a voter affiliation ever mattered.
Those few Democrats are from the 80% of the population that is neither extremist Republican or extremist Democratic. The pro-Republican sentiment echoed here and elsewhere represents perhaps only 10% of the sentiment nationwide, with rabid Democratic sentiments taking another 10% or so. THAT is the reason for voter apathy in this country: most Americans do not identify with either extreme, because they don't think their vote matters... or because they see Republicans and Democrats as two sides of the same coin.
And I'll end this post with a bold prediction: for the same reasons I mentioned above, the Libertarians are going to have MASSIVE success - as both a philosophy and a party - in the next ten to fifteen years. The Republicans are as stagnant as the Democrats... and Americans are starting to realize that now.
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