The following is a letter from former congressman, Alan Grayson.
“I don’t know what Founding Father and President Thomas Jefferson would have thought about TV, cars, spaceships, cellphones, skyscrapers, computers or nuclear weapons. But I do know what Jefferson would have thought about the Buffett Rule. He would have liked it.
The Buffett Rule is the Obama Administration’s proposal to adopt a 30% minimum tax rate on personal income above $1 million a year. It would promote one of the central tenets of progressivism: that the burden of taxes should fall on the rich, not the poor.
In 1811, two years after Jefferson left the Presidency, Jefferson wrote a letter to General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution. Jefferson said that he supported taxes (then tariffs, since there was no income tax yet) falling entirely on the wealthy. As Jefferson explained: “The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of this country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”
Here is someone else who was an outspoken proponent of progressive taxation: Adam Smith, who literally “wrote the book” on capitalism. In 1776, in The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote:
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
(I wonder: When Adam Smith wrote about the “luxuries and vanities” of the rich, was he contemplating Mitt Romney’s elevator for Romney’s car? Or is that simply beyond contemplation?)
Two hundred years ago, when America was founded, progressive taxation was viewed as just common sense. We still have common sense, don’t we?
First, let’s see the Buffett Rule for individuals. Then the Buffett Rule for corporations. That would be progressive. And that would be progress.”
And people wonder why we study history… 🙂
[…] What would Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith Say About Raising Taxes on the Rich? I.E. The Buffett Rul… (johnhively.wordpress.com) This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← IN MEMORY OF MY SAINTED FATHER, WHO, FORESEEING THE RESULTS OF OUR CIVIL WAR, AND THE CONDITIONS THAT MUST ARISE FROM THE CORRUPT FINANCIAL SYSTEM ADOPTED IN ITS EARLY STAGES, GAVE WARNING TO HIS CHILDREN, ENTREATING THEM EVER TO REMEMBER THE CAUSE OF THE OPPRESSED, AND EVER TO CONDEMN A SYSTEM OF LEGISLATION CALCULATED TO REDUCE THE LABORING CLASSES TO A STATE OF ABJECT AND HOPELESS SERVITUDE ; […]
“We are all the more reconciled to the tax on importations, because it falls exclusively on the rich, and with the equal partition of intestate’s estates, constitutes the best agrarian law. In fact, the poor man in this country who uses nothing but what is made within his own farm or family, or within the United States, pays not a farthing of tax to the General Government, but on his salt; and should we go into that manufacture as we ought to do, he will pay not one cent.” –Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1811.
“What a cruel reflection that a rich country cannot long be a free one.” –Thomas Jefferson: Travels in France, 1787
“The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers.” –Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” — (The Republic) by Plato.
“Birth and wealth together have prevailed over virtue and talent in all ages” John Adams
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.
Except we got this,
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” Thomas Jefferson
If you want progressive taxes, then get rid of entitlements.