It will be asked how will the two masses of Continental and of State money have cost the people of the United States seventy-two millions of dollars, when they are to be redeemed now with about six million? I answer that the difference, being sixty-six millions, has been lost on the paper bills separately by the successive holders of them. Every one, through whose hands a bill passed, lost on that bill what it lost in value during the time it was in his hands. This was a real tax on him; and in this way the people of the United States actually contributed those sixty-six millions of dollars during the war, and by a mode of taxation the most oppressive of all because the most unequal of all.
Category: taxation
Power always corrupts
Power always corrupts, and the power of government to tell people how to live their lives or to transfer money from those who earn it to others is always a temptation to corruption. Taxes and regulations reduce people’s incentive to produce wealth, and government transfer programs reduce people’s incentive to work, to save, and to help family and friends in case of sickness, disability, or retirement. … [I]t is nonetheless clear that government enterprises are less efficient, less innovative, and more wasteful than private firms. … [C]ompare what it’s like to call American Express versus the IRS to correct problems. Or compare a private apartment building with public housing.
Will power
In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.
Hidden taxation
Inflation is in effect a hidden tax. The money that people have saved is robbed of part of its purchasing power, which is quietly transferred to the government that issues new money.
Taxation without representation
Inflation is taxation without representation.
No checks on prosperity
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
One sin of socialism
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.
Taxation equals slavery
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
Government does not create wealth
Government does not create resources when it taxes people and prints money; it merely redistributes the wealth.
Bi-partisan theft
Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. … Since government has no resources of its own, and since there’s no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong — in effect, legalized theft.