... redistribution also damages the development of new businesses. Entrepreneurs are restricted because they must spend so much time sheltering their wealth; and the whole system contradicts the American dedication to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans.How much time and added expense on discerning, maintaining, gathering, keeping records, then hiring professional accounting and legal services are inflicted on us and added to the out and out waste and theft confiscation from us through taxation? m/r
If We Must Pay Taxes, What is the Least Bad Way To Do That?
Ben Franklin once observed that nothing is as certain as death and taxes. He might have added that nothing is as certain to put readers to sleep as a lengthy discussion of taxes. Thus, I have only a short discussion of taxes to keep people alert as we near the month of April, when taxes are due.
First, Franklin was right; we must pay some of our earnings in taxes. Even Adam Smith admitted that national defense and administrative upkeep are legitimate functions of government. And that takes some revenue. But how should that revenue be raised?
Ever since FDR and the 1930s, we have been locked into the income tax (and corporate taxes) as the prime raisers of revenue. The Founders of our country did not agree with that approach, in part because it put the tax controls in the hands of politicians, not people. Politicians, under the income tax system, have incentives to raise taxes on the rich because the rich are few in number and large in income. That revenue from the rich can then be redistributed to voters in other income brackets in the form of government programs. The politicians thus win more votes than they lose, and some Americans gain federal taxdollars at the expense of the wealthy. ...
... Under the current income tax system, liberty is always precarious. We do not choose what taxes we pay by what we consume; politicians choose what taxes we pay depending on political conditions at the moment. As a nation, we should think of returning to consumption taxes as the least of evils.
... Under the current income tax system, liberty is always precarious. We do not choose what taxes we pay by what we consume; politicians choose what taxes we pay depending on political conditions at the moment. As a nation, we should think of returning to consumption taxes as the least of evils.
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