Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/40

 duty. I have been studying political economy almost exclusively for the last fifteen years, and when I look back over that period and ask myself what is the most marked effect which I can perceive on my own opinion, or on my standpoint, as to social questions, I find that it is this: I am convinced that nobody yet understands the multiplied and complicated effects which are produced by taxation. I am under the most profound impression of the mischief which is done by taxation, reaching, as it does, to every dinner-table and to every fireside. The effects of taxation vary with every change in the industrial system and the industrial status, and they are so complicated that it is impossible to follow, analyze, and systematize them; but out of the study of the subject there arises this firm conviction: taxation is crippling, shortening, reducing all the time, over and over again.

30. Suppose that a man has an income of one thousand dollars, of which he has been saving one hundred dollars per annum with no tax. Now a tax of ten dollars is demanded of him, no matter what kind of a tax or how laid. Is he to get the tax out of the nine hundred dollars expenditure or out of the one hundred dollars savings? If the former, then he must cut down his diet, or his clothing, or his house accommodation, that is, lower his standard of comfort. If the latter, then he must lessen his accumulation of capital, that is, his provision for the future. Either way his welfare is reduced and cannot be otherwise affected, and, through the general effect, the welfare of the community is reduced by the tax. Of course it is immaterial that he may not know the facts. The effects are the same. In this view of the matter it is plain what mischief is done by taxes which are laid to buy parks, libraries, and all sorts of grand things. The tax-layer is not providing public order. He is spending other people's earnings for them. He is deciding that his neighbor shall have less clothes and