Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Quote:
In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce (why isn't this in quotes?) “the enormous inequality” [B]between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of [/B](why isn't this in quotes?) “silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” huge lib talking point...google it
Madison later spoke in favor of using laws to (why isn't this in quotes?) “reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity (meaning the middle) and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”
During the early days of the republic, the government relied mostly on tariffs to collect revenue, under the theory that since the rich bought most of the imports, they would pay most of the taxes.
“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the general government are levied,” Jefferson wrote in 1811. “The poor man, who uses nothing but what is made in his own farm or family, will pay nothing. (With) our revenues applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.
[/I]
|
As Jefferson also said, "To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."