Are You Sitting Down?

I wish the fire would hurry and spread so we could be done with the income tax and move on.  Believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around the income tax.  I have other things I’d like to do, folks!  I have a screenplay I’m writing based loosely on my recent deployment, I’m writing a memoir based on my upbringing in what I think was an interesting family, and I intend to write a book that will restore the names of Admiral Kimmel and General Short (of Pearl Harbor fame).  I also need to get more milk.  So, let’s pick up the pace, get some new convictions about the income tax, and tell our representatives to just let it die.  Print out some of these posts and send them along if you think it will help.  The income tax was a bad idea from the beginning, and that fact hasn’t changed in 100 years.

A few posts ago I made a sarcastic remark about Edwin Seligman’s “rousing” summation of why we need an income tax.  I’m going to relate that now, so hold on to your hats – it’s about to get real!

First, let’s look at the things he said that actually support my argument for doing away with the income tax.  At the very outset of his 700-page history of this form of taxation (published in 1911), he writes: “The income tax has come into the forefront of public discussion with comparative rapidity…Everywhere, in short, there seems to be a trend toward the income tax.  Why is this so?  What is the explanation of this essentially modern phenomenon?  For what reason are the fiscal systems that have so well served their purpose in the past now everywhere being brushed aside, and being replaced or supplemented by the income tax?  What, in short, is the real significance of the movement?”  (emphasis added)

Seligman goes on to convey in the clearest of terms that the income tax was not needed for raising government revenue, neither at the state nor federal level.  He notes that the tariff and excise system was providing everything the government needed, and goes so far as to say how that system could be easily tweaked to raise considerably more revenue without laying a heavy burden on the public.

So, why was Seligman pushing for the income tax?  What was the “real significance of the movement” that was behind it?  Brace yourselves!

Toward the end of his book, Seligman begins to sum it all up.  Having already stated that the fiscal systems of the past had been serving their purposes “so well,” he then says:

“…[I]t is obvious that there is no immediate likelihood of a fundamental change in the tariff [though he had just explained the little effort it would take to change what was already working and make it even better], and we have learned that the system of state and local taxation is becoming in some respects progressively worse rather than better [which contradicts his statement at the beginning of the book, and also ignores the many pages where he argues decisively against any income taxation at the state level.  Nevertheless, he goes on.]  In the face of this situation the argument for some kind of an income tax becomes very strong.  [So far, I would sum up what he said as, “Even though the sky is nowhere near falling, I think we really need this.”  He continues.]  When we join to this argument the further consideration that the adoption of an income tax would not only tend to redress existing inequalities [100 years later, that’s a joke], but would also in all probability make a reform of our entire system of state and local taxation more easy of accomplishment [a reform which he’s conceded isn’t all that necessary], the arguments in favor of the adoption of an income tax acquire additional weight.  [Again, there’s no fire, the earth isn’t collapsing, but let’s fix what essentially isn’t broken.]”

Now, this last bit of his summation is actually still part of the same paragraph, but I wanted to set it apart so I could again advise the reader to take a seat and hold on.  This is amazing.  Ready?  This is the apex of a 700-page tome that had to have taken considerable amounts of time and energy to produce.  This is what it all comes down to.

“When, finally, we add to these considerations the reflection that the income tax is in harmony with a pronounced tendency throughout the civilized world, and that wherever we find the spread of democracy, we find the growth of income taxation, the argument for the adoption of some form of income taxation becomes well-nigh irresistible.”

I’m sorry, Mr. Seligman, “well-nigh irresistible” because why?  Because everybody’s doing it!!

Holy buckets, people, did you catch that?  There’s a bandwagon, and we need to jump on!

I’d spent weeks reading this book and thinking it was going to present a really tough challenge to my beliefs.  Seligman was no lightweight – he was one of the leading experts on economics and taxation.  I thought there would be some serious soul-searching and wringing of hands and eating of words on my part when Seligman finally brought it home at the end.  But I got to this point in the book and kind of felt sorry for the guy.  I wrote in the margin: “Wow.  Weak.”

When Seligman says that “wherever we find the spread of democracy, we find the growth of income taxation,” we need to finally diagnose that “growth” as what it is: a cancer on society.  Which will be the first of the democratic countries to rid itself of this disease?  As I’ve said before, leave this form of taxation to the despots, tyrants, and dictators.  That would be fitting, because the income tax is a liberty killer.