What the cut & paster is trying to say is that Federal income tax should be a flat rate tax like all the other taxes that we have that are paid by everyone.
HockeyDad wrote:
Actually that's not at all what I'm saying.
Here's an extract from the book "The Lessons of History" by Will and Ariel Durant that I find very appropos to the current economic and political state of affairs in this country.It provides some excellent historical examples of how the natural concentration of wealth was dealt with, either by peaceful partial re-distribution, or by violent means. Please take particular note of Solon's approach to defuse refuse revolutionary fervor at a previous time in history when concentration of wealth had the masses in a foul mood...something about a graduated tax. So flame me if you will for cutting and pasting, but if someone says something worth saying and can say it better than me (which is the case most of the time), I'm not ashamed to do it. Many other "Luminaries" on this board have done so. In this case hopefully my introductory thoughts on this cut and paste will suffice to mollify those who don't care for cut and paste without accompanying personal commentary.
This little book was an epilogue to their monumental 10 volume "The Story of Civilization" compendium of modern history. "The Lessons of History" is worth reading in it's entirety. It's t's available for free on online at this URL:
http://www.archive.org/stream/LessonsOfHistory/Lessons_of_History_djvu.txt From Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History"
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The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient. Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce — except in war, when they are
ranked according to their ability to destroy.
Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such abilities, in nearly all societies, is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and the laws. Despotism may for a time
retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it. The relative equality of Americans before 1776 has been overwhelmed by a thousand forms of physical, mental, and economic differentiation, so that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than at any time since Imperial plutocratic Rome. In progressive societies the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of
ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
In the Athens of 594 b.c, according to Plutarch, "the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor had reached its height, so that the city seemed to be in a dangerous condition, and no other means for freeing it from disturbances . . . seemed possible but despotic power." The poor, finding their status worsened with each year —
the government in the hands of their masters, and the corrupt courts deciding every issue against them — began to talk of violent revolt. The rich, angry at the challenge to their property, prepared to defend themselves by force. Good sense prevailed; moderate elements secured the election of Solon, a businessman of aristocratic lineage, to the supreme archonship. He devaluated the currency, thereby easing the burden of all debtors (though he himself was a creditor) ; he reduced all personal debts, and ended imprisonment for debt; he canceled arrears for taxes and mortgage interest; he established a graduated income tax that made the rich pay at a rate twelve times that required of the poor; he reorganized the courts on a more popular basis; and he arranged that the sons of those who had died in war for Athens should be brought up and educated at the government's expense. The rich protested that his measures were outright confiscation; the radicals complained that he had not redivided the land; but within a generation almost all agreed that his reforms had saved Athens from revolution.
The Roman Senate, so famous for its wisdom, adopted an uncompromising course when the concentration of wealth approached an explosive point in Italy; the result was a hundred years of class and civil war. Tiberius Gracchus, an aristocrat elected as tribune of the people, proposed to redistribute land by limiting ownership to 333 acres per person, and alloting surplus land to the restive proletariat of the capital. The Senate rejected his proposals as confiscatory. He appealed to the people, telling them, "You fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others; you are called the masters of the world, but there is not a foot of ground that you can call your own." Contrary to Roman law, he campaigned for re-election as tribune; in an election-day riot he was slain (133 B.C.). His brother Caius, taking up his cause, failed to prevent a renewal of violence, and ordered his servant to kill him; the slave obeyed, and then killed himself (121 B.C.); three thousand of Caius' followers were put to death by Senatorial decree. Marius became the leader of the plebs, but withdrew when the movement verged on revolution. Catiline, proposing to abolish all debts, organized a revolutionary army of "wretched paupers"; he was inundated by Cicero's angry eloquence, and died in battle against the state (62 b.c). Julius Caesar attempted a compromise, but was cut down by the patricians (44 b.c.) after five years of civil war. Mark Antony confused his support of Caesar's policies with personal ambitions and romance; Octavius defeated him at
Actium, and established the "Principate" that for 210 years (30 b.c.- a.d. 1 80) maintained the Pax Romana between the classes as well as among the states within the Imperial frontiers.
After the breakdown of political order in the Western Roman Empire (a.d. 476), centuries of destitution were followed by the slow renewal and reconcentration of wealth, partly in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. In one aspect the Reformation was a redistribution of this wealth by the reduction of German and English payments to the Roman Church, and by the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property and revenues. The French Revolution attempted a violent redistribution of wealth by Jacqueries in the countryside and massacres in the cities, but the chief result was a transfer
of property and privilege from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie.
The government of the United States, in 1933-52 and 1960-65, followed Solon's peaceful methods, and accomplished a moderate and pacifying redistribution; perhaps someone had studied history. The upper classes in America cursed, complied, and resumed the concentration of wealth.
We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation
