A short, sad history of taxation

Orange County Register ^ | 07/28/02 | John Seiler

[Boonie Rat]

Fifth in a series of weekly essays on aspects of liberty.

America was born in a tax revolt. The founders decried "taxation without representation." On Dec. 16, 1773, revolutionaries in Boston dumped tea into the harbor rather than let the British collect taxes on it.

[Boonie Rat]

"He (Washington D.C.) has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers (revenue agents) to harass our people (the states), and eat out their substance."

Boonie Rat

MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-'66

[mikesmad]

Our problem today is that we have more and more people that have "Representation without taxation". Less and less people care about high taxes.

[Grit]

Bump

[Chi-townChief]

bump

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"a small slump late last year"

This one commonly-accepted item is incorrect, or at least incomplete.

Take a good look at the econometric graphs which festoon this analysis. The recession clearly began early in 2000, almost a full year before Clinton left office.

This timing actually fits better with the author's thesis that high taxes precipitate economic dislocation and recession, as the onset of this recession coincided with the highest peacetime taxation in American history. It also coincided with the burst of the dot-com bubble (which, as the analysis explains, is also traceable to government interventionism), the dismantling of the Clinton/Rubin "Plunge Protection Team", some spectacularly ill-advised anti-inflation moves by the Federal Reserve, and a few other things. It is a testament to the robustness of the American economy in the face of confiscatory taxation and inept Federal meddling that things did not grow much worse much earlier.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump