The Fatal Sequence - H.W. Prentis President of the Armstrong Cork Company 1943

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction. - Henning W. Prentis, Industrial Management in a Republic, p. 22

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.C.)
The budget should be balanced. The Treasury should be filled. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officials should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest we ourselves should become bankrupt. The people should be forced to work and not depend on government subsistence.

"What we're doing to this country today is absolutely in the wrong direction. We have not decided that there is competition. We are sitting there saying, we've always been number 1, we're always gonna be number 1, the American people are resilient and they'll respond to a challenge. And we hope we're gonna be number 1.

"Hope is not a strategy. We've got to earn what you want. And you've got to earn it the old fashioned way. You earn it with education, you earn it with hard work, and you earn it with investment. The government has to understand that they have to support hard work, investment and education. That's our only future." Intel ex-CEO Robert Barrett

The economics of our federal income tax has been under assault by some of our best economists and tax men. The general conclusion seems to be that this tax acts as a drag on the economy, slowing economic growth, producing chronic commodity inflation, discouraging savings and enterprise, and putting America at some disadvantage in world trade with those nations, especially the miracle economies, who have moderate, simpler tax systems--systems that encourage and promote capitalism.

Any Income Tax is intrinsically wrong – that is, the very concept of a tax on income is wrong. A tax that is arbitrary, like our current federal income tax, is simply confiscation under the guise of taxation.

How long would a Flat Income Tax stay Flat after assault by the special “rent-seeking” interests in Washington, D.C?

The Flat Income Tax concept misses the $200 billion-plus underground economy of criminals, professional tax avoiders and foreign tourists.

Not only would an indirect National Retail Sales Tax drive the underground economy above ground, but it would also have the additional advantage to eliminate the competitive disadvantage any direct income tax (be it flat, proportional or progressive) would place on American products selling overseas.

Foreign countries that have an indirect consumption tax have a competitive advantage against the United States in World Trade.

Foreign countries can remove their consumption tax at their borders. Contrarily, U.S. Goods which are sold retail in a foreign country are subject to two costs of government (in the form of taxes – ours and theirs). But if the foreign goods are sold in the United States, foreigners bear no part of the cost of U.S. government because they remove their consumption tax at their border and we do not add it on at our border.

We are penalizing our exports and subsidizing foreign imports with our present income tax system – we are exporting jobs overseas.

The great sage of the Enlightenment, Barone de Montesquieu who inspired the Framers of the US Constitution through his book, The Spirit of Laws (1751) taught emphatically that excessive taxation produces slavery; noting that “men living in a liberty oriented society will foolishly submit to excessive taxation”. If our current tax makers and we as a people had been schooled in his studies, as the Framers of our Constitution were schooled, we may not be having the tax troubles that now infect our whole social order.

Montesquieu added a further observation, that excessive taxes will require, "extraordinary means of oppression." And from that, "the country is ruined." Furthermore, Montesquieu described direct taxes (i.e. progressive or flat INCOME TAXES) as being "natural to slavery, " unlike indirect taxes, or a "duty on merchandise which is more natural to liberty, because it is not so direct a relation to the person."

These conclusions of Montesquieu were not theories, it was plainly visible to him as a fact in the governments of his day and of those in history. With Montesquieu we are not dealing with logic, we are dealing with what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he said, "A page of history is worth a volume of logic."