Tolleson, DL. “Redistribution Through Taxation.”
DLTolleson.com, 2009.
http://www.dltolleson.com/commentary/redistributionthroughtaxation.php.
Tolleson, DL. “Redistribution Through Taxation.”
TheLighthousePress.com, 2016.
http://www.thelighthousepress.com/dltolleson.com/commentary/redistributionthroughtaxation.php.
During 1946, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York wrote an article in a publication called American Affairs (I donated all my old copies to the library just a few years ago and went back to the library to personally look this up).
The then Chairman, Beardsley Ruml, noted that the Federal Reserve was able to create out of nothing all the money that the government would ever want. He said, in short, that since people with money spend on goods and services, prices respond by going up. To control this process money should be taken away through taxation so that instead, the government could spend it (this raises prices also, but he didn’t point that out)..
And then he wrote:
“The second principal purpose of federal taxes is to attain more equality of wealth and income than would result from economic forces working alone. The taxes which are effective for this purpose are the progressive individual income tax, the progressive estate tax and the gift tax. What these taxes should be depends on public policy with respect to the distribution of wealth and of income. These taxes should be defended and attacked in terms of their effect on the character of American life, not as revenue measures.”
“Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete,” Beardsley Ruml, American Affairs, January, 1946 pp. 35-36
So who was Beardsley Ruml? After all, anyone can achieve a modicum of success and power while also being “off the wall.”
Well, Ruml had a Ph.D. in psychology, contributed to designing the U.S. Army aptitude and intelligence tests, was an adviser to President Herbert Hoover and is the “father” of automatic withholding that began in World War II by virtue of his designing it. In other words, you’re paying taxes because of what he helped create.
Ruml's quote is evidence that Socialist ideology has influenced American economic oversight from the top forces in government down to the man in the street. Throughout history Socialism has failed every time it was tried and the only way it can work in piecemeal is when free enterprise/capitalism lessens it damaging impact. America, with a population that has been the most socioeconomically comfortable of any throughout history, is the ultimate and final proof that vindicates Margaret Thatcher when, in 1976, she said, “...socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They (socialists) always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”
The question we face is, How many straws of socialism can be piled upon us before breaking the American camel’s back?
