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Taxation Despite Representation
March 11, 2010
There are only a few movies I really, really enjoy watching. Among them is Amistad. After all, I’m a history buff (particularly of antiquity and of the American founding era) as well as a political junky. So it comes as no surprise that I see all sorts of political metaphors on the silver screen. And Amistad does not disappoint.
In case you missed the epic story circa 1997, it tells of the struggle of a group of mutinous slaves who steer their way to the coast of New England to find themselves embroiled in a legal battle for their very lives. The 1841 Supreme Court case quickly becomes the catalyst for the brewing fisticuff between the northern and southern states that eventually erupted into full scale Civil War, costing more than 600,000 American lives.
We tend to look upon that tragic chapter in our nation’s history as a necessary evil, one that resulted in the end to slavery in America. Never again would a class of people have absolute control over the labor and fruits thereto of another class. Or so we’ve thought…
The panoply of costly legislative dicta currently on parade in Washington — replete with promises of reform, justice, and equity — obscure the fundamental question at hand, to which more than a few members of our elite Senate have failed miserably to muster a cogent answer. The question is presupposed, after all, in one of James Madison’s better-known declarations: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Not unlike the taxation without representation that sparked the Revolution, we are besieged by a political class in Washington hell-bent on taxing us despite our representation. It is a class beholden to anything but the Constitution. And when this class lays claim, a priori, both to the means and fruit of the American people’s labor for its own redistributionary schemes, what else shall we call it but slavery?
And so we find ourselves once again embroiled in a civil war. Though not on the battlefield and without weapons, we are faced with the same struggle. Will we throw off the chains of our oppressors with the very constitutional means which our Framers afforded us, or will we rest idly bye whilst our chains get heavier still?
For his portrayal of John Quincy Adams in Amistad, Anthony Hopkins received an Academy Award nomination. To be sure, one of his greatest movie lines is one we must heed now more than ever: “James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington… John Adams. We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding… that who we are IS who we were.”
[…] Please read Brett Farley’s post at: https://www.americanmajority.org/feature-content/taxation-representation/ […]
I really have to say that equating taxation and slavery does a disservice to your readers.
Taxation is a burden placed upon a population in order to pay for the expenditures of the state and while both sides of the political coin will postulate which expenditures are wasteful, there remains a necessity and value in making them.
Slavery on the other hand is the complete ownership of one man by another where the slave finds all the fruits of his labor taken for the benefit of the owner who then still inevitably pays taxes on those profits. Comparing the abject misery and degradation caused by slavery to the inconvenience of taxation is just wrong and does nothing to promote dialogue in this country.
As to why you find no means of federal tax collection in the constitution that is because there is clearly an invitation to update the document as necessary as Thomas Jefferson favored and wrote extensively about. How do you expect a document written for what amounted to the semi modern version of Italian city states to remain unchanged 200 years and 300 million people later.
What opponents of taxation always miss is the benefits they take for granted having been born into modern America with an infrastructure paid for by previous generations. The coveted free market would not exist without the support and assurances of the federal government and our legal system of contracts, our roads, bridges, highways, utilities, police, fire, and social welfare. You can debate where that money should be spent best and how to cut costs but make no mistake, this is not stimulus for the free market, this is the bedrock on which is rests.
Josh, thanks for your thoughtful comments. Of course I’m entirely confused as to how my reference to Washington’s redistributionary schemes amounts to “opposition of taxation.” Though no one (including the Framers) enjoys paying taxes, taxation is a necessary and proper function of government. And the Constitution is very clear about the means with which taxation ought to be administered. But when Americans are expected to pay in taxes–all totaled–more than half their income, something clearly has gone awry. Before the dubious ratification of the 16th Amendment, taxation was small and equally apportioned. Now, the most is exacted from the least–namely the producers who serve as the pillars of our economy. Productivity and industriousness are rewarded with regulation, higher taxes, and more regulation. I must have missed the Framers’ comments in favor of such a system.
I agree the framers would not approve of our current system but I do not believe they would agree with either major political party either. Thomas Jefferson warned about the formations of parties for the reason that with consolidation of power would come the consolidation of ideas and policies that would no longer work in the interest of the people but instead for the interests of the party bosses.
Our problem is not excessive taxation but a two party boss system who take turns feeding their patrons tax dollars and then bend the law through legislation to favor their interests.
The irony in your tax thesis though is that the wealthiest americans while paying more into the system then the 85-90% of the population below them still pay less of a percentage of their earnings than an average worker thanks to dividends, off-shore accounting, and tax loop holes created expressly for their benefit. The middle class should be up in arms right now over how badly they are being treated while the wealthy continue to push for lower taxes as if that would somehow improve the economy.
Its saddens me that the tea party movement has adopted such a flimsy right wing stances on taxation given that it has so many smart and well meaning people among its ranks. The answer is not a new tax structure, its the taking back of the spending by the people and not the special interests. Once we take control of the purse strings we can cut costs and close corporate tax loopholes, off shoring, and subsidies.
Get the corporations out of the party and you just might find some wiggle room to cut taxes for those who actually need it, but leave corporations to run the show and all the tax cuts in the world will serve to do nothing but increase our debt to china.
Decent points, Josh. But there are at least two problems with your polemic. First, your point of “irony” assumes that spending which results from tax cuts for the “wealthiest americans [sic]” does not lead to economic growth. But even the economics undergrad can explain that spending by the rich with even the most nefarious of motives leads to economic expansion…which in turn leads to more jobs for the “average worker.” This stinks of Algorian class warfare.
Second, this “new tax structure” you refer to here actually isn’t new at all (notwithstanding that I’ve not specifically advocated any particular structure). But whether we’re assuming such a reform as a flat tax or national retail sales tax structure, both are hardly new and both are in active [read: successful] use around the country and abroad.
Dollars are like water, Josh. They will eventually go wherever they wish. But, it’s the structured bulkhead that keeps the sailors dry.
Your first point is flawed and incorrect. Money transferred to the wealthy does not equal economic growth. It is a fundamental fallacy and no matter how many Chicago school grads spout it as a truth in economics it simply is not true.
As a percentage of total income a middle class worker will spend a great deal more than someone making a few million a year. In fact in the last 30 years america’s middle and lower class savings rate has gone into the red with people not only not saving money, but actually going further into debt with each passing year to keep up with inflation.
Think about this from a pure macro perspective. A dollar sent to the bottom of the economy will make its way back to the top quickly and primarily through the retail sectors which spur small business ownership. In addition that dollar will most likely be used to produce a good or service which adds equity to the overall economy. Now take the same dollar and put it into the account of a hedge fund manager who uses it to invest in stocks and bonds, or worse to short a stock or bond. The likelihood of that dollar touching the bottom of the economy is slim to none with its only chance coming in the form of loans and investment which as of late are chocked off even with record profits being made for those on top.
The underlying point is that Milton Friedman is dead and so should be his economic theories. Returning money to the top of the pyramid places a bet that 5% of the population will invest money with the 95% in a way that will benefit all and not just enrich himself. That is a poor bet and one that can be called supply side economics, or more accurately, economic royalism, this is of course what Jefferson accused Hamilton of early in our country’s development.
The John Galt mythology has got to stop and people have got to stop believing the idea that sending money to the top will trickle down money on everyone else simply because the wealthiest among us are supposed to be the most productive and industrious. THEY ARENT, and only in a true meritocracy could one make that point, and we live as far from a meritocracy as can be conceived by the human mind.
Wow…just, wow. Karl Marx is nodding in his grave.
I will take your lack of a counter argument as your concession to all my points….and thats not Marx, thats Keynes. Calling someone a socialist because you have no argument is not a victory, its a hollow retreat to rhetoric and an admission of loss
After reading the main body and the comments below I must say that “Josh” is most definitely a formidable opponent to you Mr. Farley. Furthermore might I add, that you sir have just been served.
Once being served Mr. Farley you must indeed try harder then “Wow…just, wow. Karl Marx is nodding in his grave.” but I fret sir that you indeed lack the fortitude to do so. Good day sir!
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