Taxman

SteynonLine ^ | April 14, 2024 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

Tomorrow is Tax Day in America - April 15th, the day before Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia (April 16th). So Monday represents America's formal Emancipation Day from what H & R Block & Co like to dignify as "Tax Season". As I used to say on Rush every year round this time, the acceptance of that term is not a good sign: Baseball should have a season, but not tax. Nevertheless, in the brokey brokiest nation in the history of brokeness, on this day the season of 1040s and 1099s draws to a close, and so, as we do with spring and summer, we offer a song for said season.

For the first half of Tin Pan Alley's history, tax barely rated a mention in popular song. Before the Second World War, I can think of just two well-known ditties that even broach the subject, and then only in fifth or sixth choruses that rarely if ever get sung. Gus Kahn was the lyricist of not only our very first Song of the Week, but the second, too: "San Francisco" and "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", respectively. Long before either hit, he wrote one of those defining anthems of the Jazz Age, in 1921 with Richard Whiting and Raymond Egan. "Ain't We Got Fun?" is a breezy rejoinder to straitened times:

Ev'ry morning

Ev'ry evening

Ain't We Got Fun?

Not much money

Oh, but honey

Ain't We Got Fun?

[dadfly]

lol with Mark. (otherwise i would cry.)

[EvilCapitalist]

The Beatles wrote a good song too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zaebtU-CA

[Bonemaker]

When America still had a pair.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

I was watching the local FOX news this morning and they were interviewing this woman whose occupation was FINANCIAL THERAPIST.

What has this world come to. Now people need therapy regarding their financial situation?????

[Fiji Hill]

Ain't We Got Fun? by Van & Schenck and Second-Hand Rose by Vaughn De Leath and Look for the Silver Lining by Marion Harris, all from 1921, were likely inspired by the depression of 1920. President Harding tackled the depression by slashing government bloat and spending and keeping Washington's hands off the free market. The depression quickly faded and then morphed into a recovery that lasted the rest of the decade.

[Fiji Hill]

There were several versions of "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on the market in the spring of 1931, but Wayne King's version is my favorite.

[aquila48]

By far the worst mistake this country ever made was the passage of the 16th amendment!

[Fiji Hill]

A protest against high taxes generated by the big-spending Woodrow Wilson administration.

Taxation Blues--Nora Bayes (1919)

[Fiji Hill]

By far the worst mistake this country ever made was the passage of the 16th amendment!

That and the 17th Amendment, passed around the same time.

[TermLimits4All]

Atlanta IRS offices. Don’t know when this happened but probably Friday. https://x.com/wallstreetapes/status/1779511906505830841?s=46

[Presbyterian Reporter]

See my comment #5.

Looks like they are in line to see their FINANCIAL THERAPIST.

[BozoTexino]

Same in Houston.