The group Downsize DC has put up a good quote from Thomas Jefferson about taxes, which I’m adopting and putting on my quotes page:
“We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
— Thomas Jefferson
The gist of it (for those who have a hard time following Jefferson’s long sentences) is that the government’s racking up of debts, with the taxes that the government levies on him, puts such a strain on the average tax-payer that he has no time to try to fix the system.
In America today, not only do we have to PAY the taxes, we have to do the government’s work to figure out how much we owe them. I believe the fair tax system (a national sales tax that abolishes the need for the IRS) is the way to go. This is a wildly popular tax scheme that will simply do away with the IRS and replace it with a huge sales tax. If you don’t spend your money, you won’t be taxed on it. No more estate taxes, inheritance taxes, death taxes, etc.
What’s your view?
That is a great quote! Yes, national sales tax is what we need!
In case you’re interested, we left off the first sentence of this quote…
“We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
Jim Babka, DownsizeDC.org
Excellent quote from Thomas Jefferson. I’m pretty sure he was never accused of an inadequate vocabulary.
He and the other Founding Fathers had a very clear view of improper taxation. That view has unfortunately been altered over the years. The FairTax bill, however, can rectify many years of improper taxation. An enormous amount of time, attention and money will be freed up by implementing this method of tax collection. With one fell swoop, we can bring vitality to our economy.