Who Will Pay?

"I thought it was an interoffice joke."

That's how Chuck Collins, co-founder of a group called United for a Fair Economy, reacted when he was first told that William Gates Sr. wanted to talk with him about stopping the repeal of the estate tax.

It was no joke. The father of one of the richest men in history believes, as he put it during a visit here this week, that the inheritance tax "is the most intelligent tax ever devised."

Why? Because it doesn't tax labor or investment. It encourages each generation to build new wealth. And it accepts the idea that the very wealthy owe something back -- not just to society but to government itself.
[more]

The following article was written in 1945. I could have been written today. It should have been written today. A must read.

Who Wants Taxes Cut?

Taxes are the prorated cost of things we can buy only from government. We get about what we pay for. We should get more and better fire and police protection, education, sanitation, recreational facilities, food inspection, control over fraudulent transactions, and reduction in the risk of our investments if we paid more taxes. Yet by listening to the low- tax people all these years we have cheated ourselves out of the essentials only government can give us. It is time we examined the economy-in-government interests and determined whether we as individuals should listen to them or decide for ourselves how much government service we actually need and want and can afford to buy. (...)

The individual voices of the citizens must be raised to be heard above the voices of the corporation, the business, the institution. We need to say loudly and repeatedly that our children need a better education, our block needs better police, fire, and health protection; that we want to spend our vacations in better public parks; that we want our gasoline supply conserved, our game and fish protected, our passage to and from the city made safer, and our grandchildren's peace made secure. Low taxes, niggardly budgets, and penny-pinching won't buy these things. High taxes won't guarantee them, either; but if we all pay high taxes we shall do a better job of insisting that the money is spent for what we can buy only from government for our own--and the nation's--benefit.
[more]

  thanks to Cheek