If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteen being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; But be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...and the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816
Now
that is down right scary in that it parallels America today!
How many
months do we have to work before we pay our taxes. Many have no time, nor the inclination, to think because of the rigors of their labor much less on "calling the mismanagers to account".
And as far as "oatmeal and potatoes goes", we call it rice and beans one day and beans and rice the next just to change things up a bit.
A toast, to the repeal of both the 16th and 17th Amendments, destructors of America.