Taxes: A Historical Perspective
Nollson, John
"Taxes: A Historical Perspective" news judgment at the paper. (To its credit, the Washington Post saw through the story, all but ignoring it.) The House Assassinations Committee, which has been "pursuing" the Byers story, almost...
...Jordan struggles with his drinking, his literary failure, and—in an embarrassing rape scene—his sister-in-law Griffith...
...Little progress was made until Greek times...
...Its leader was Minimillian Taxpierre, who claimed to speak for all oppressed taxpierres...
...Marshall...
...All I can say is that things were different when I was a boy...
...Interiors is about a wealthy New York family reminiscent of Salinger's Glasses, though brought up to date and deprived of their wit...
...There is an attorney (E.G...
...In the course of the film Stapleton tries to commit suicide twice (successfully the second time...
...The request was turned down...
...Taxitus succeeded in getting himself elected Tribune, but was the victim of a murder plot engineered by his illegitimate son, known to history as Taxitus Minimus—to differentiate him from his more statist father...
...Bismarck would not have been able to lay the groundwork for World War I had he not set about to reduce the taxes of the average German...
...Is it because I hated my father...
...He and his partners would go to the Agora at lunchtime to argue with Aristotle...
...In The Allen Notebooks, for example, we read: "Good Lord, why am I Ben Yagoda is a free-lance writer living in New Ydik: so guilty...
...Well, what was it doing in his wallet...
...I have no idea what they put down in the case of someone whohas both black and white ancestry, such as the Secretary of HUD, Patricia Harris...
...Lear...
...I'm feeling good about myself' ' ; "I suddenly became hyperaware of my body...
...Arabic numerals remained unknown, so it was impossible to construct econometric models...
...There would have been double-digit inflation, except that Arabic numerals were still not in wide use and digits, as such, were unknown...
...The results make one wonder if he was really kidding before...
...Earlier on I had spent some rather fruitless hours in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's grim headquarters...
...People will be allowed to be whatever race they claim to be...
...If you think this sounds like a soap opera, you have put your finger on the pulse of the film...
...In a legalistic environment, this turns out to be indistinguishable from a "race review court," which, if used in connection with government hiring procedures, would be unpleasant enough to melt away most, if not all, support for affirmative action programs...
...This is the key point in my argument...
...Taxes are high, productivity declines, and government is bigger than ever...
...The Civil Service man then told me that they soon would be asking for race on their application forms as they used to years ago...
...A perennial best-seller since, "The Sensuous Taxpayer" paved the way for a whole series of bawdy, do-it-yourself tax guides...
...A great debate ensued...
...This point was wholly lost on British socialists, whose reputations were saved by the fortunate intervention of the Great Depression...
...Now it is an interesting fact, and one that has scarcely, if at all, been reported in the press, that the federal government now employs people who go around peering into offices, counting up black and white faces...
...in a feeble attempt to keep things moving...
...his wife (Geraldine Page), a decorator whose craziness leads her to become his ex-wife...
...But as soon as graphs could be drawn, the plight of the overtaxed citizenry became plain to see...
...I feel a real need to express something, but I don't know what it is I want to express, or how to express it...
...The House Assassinations Committee, which has been "pursuing" the Byers story, almost certainly leaked it to the Times...
...Nonetheless, no one has learned anything from the history of Western civilization...
...In Roman times, the collapse of the Republic had led to no end of fiscal disorder...
...Therefore, the only way "racial self-identification" could be challenged would be, again, by some kind of "visual survey...
...In the course of telling me some of the difficulties involved in running a local government, he said that their police department had been sued by the EEOC because its percentage of black policemen was a point or two below the overall percentage of blacks in the county...
...Perhaps most important, all of the feeling is unearned: Since the film has no conception of life outside the family, it has nothing to say about how or why the characters reached their present pass, and uncritically accepts their solipsism...
...the intimacy of it embarrasses me...
...Soon, people lost interest in paying taxes altogether, and government revenues declined...
...Taxilio Reducio was then in his ascendency as fiscal advisor to the Doge of Venice...
...This tendency was excoriated by the Roman economic theorist, Taxitus...
...The French Revolution was a hopeful sign, but things took a turn for the worse when an anarchistic left-winger in Germany thought up progressive tax rates...
...Thank God Rene had wit enough to invent analytic geometry...
...Augustine pointed out, the City of God would operate on sound economic principles, characterized by moderate taxation and price stability (i.e., less than V-percent inflation per annum...
...Everyone agreed that no one had, therefore no one paid...
...To all those corporations, fire departments, university faculties, et cetera, who have been plagued by an "order" from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that they implement an "affirmative action" program, I hereby announce a simple solution, which I believe is legally watertight...
...The early Church Fathers were unanimously opposed to usury, so interest rates were low...
...My point is that if one department of government (the Civil Service Commission) accepts racial self-identification, then presumably so must another (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...
...My own anger scares me...
...Perhaps to ward off this impression, the man told me that the Civil Service Commission will accept "racial self-identification...
...The Doge established the world's first sinking fund for the retirement of the public debt...
...Accordingly, IX-percent inflation was considered acceptable in those days...
...Which is no doubt why James Gleason grinned...
...I pay, therefore I am," wrote the great French thinker...
...Tax historians now refer to this as the Cro-Magnon Matrix, in honor of the food-gatherer who first noticed that taxes tend to rise...
...The problems of affirmative action programs disappear once this is perceived...
...I can't seem to shake the real implications of dying...
...Government spending continued to rise...
...her replacement (Maureen Stapleton...
...A nice slice of publicity—perhaps enough to encourage the House Administration Subcommittee to approve the additional $790,000 which, two days after the Times' second front-page story, was requested to keep the investigation going a little longer...
...and "How's Richard...
...1=1 John Nollson Taxes: A Historical Perspective The first person to notice that taxes were too high was an anonymous cave dweller in southern France...
...James Gleason, county executive of Montgomery County...
...All of the above gems are solemnly uttered, accorded the utmost respect by writer/ director Allen...
...He picked up a phone at his elbow and shot the question across to someone else...
...three daughters (Chekhov...
...a poetess (Diane Keaton), an actress/photographer/ editor/ copywriter (Marybeth Hurt), and another actress (Kristin Griffith...
...He hit upon the idea of tax deductions for charitable contributions, and the arts flourished...
...This was a natural outgrowth of Calvinist theology, best expressed by Taxel Grossenpaer's legendary inversion of the Cartesian theorem: "I have, therefore I pay...
...Civil service application forms do not query race...
...Increasing thoughts about death just seemed to come over me...these feelings of futility in relation to my work...
...But Interiors is no comedy: Wait as we may for the gaglines, they never come...
...Trade expanded, but defense expenditures rose to counter the Hun military build-up...
...28 The American Spectator October 1978 It was better in the Renaissance...
...Meanwhile, as St...
...These cadences are familiar to readers and watchers of Allen's previous work: the pseudophilosophy that says nothing, the obsession with feelings (especially regarding death), the flat, literal language with psychoanalytic overtones—all have been exploited to unique comic effect in his films and parodies...
...There is no genetic test whereby blacks can unequivocally be distinguished from whites (as there is, of course, with men and women...
...I called the Civil Service Commission and asked someone there how the various departments obtained this information...
...This might seem like a regressive step...
...Without it, man could not draw graphs...
...It led to the first taxpayers' revolt, sometimes called the French Revolution...
...I told Gleason that all he had to do was find half a dozen policemen (or however many were needed) who were prepared to say they were black...
...So prosperous was Venice in those days that no one imagined that in a few centuries it would be necessary to create a fund to keep Venice from sinking...
...The trend was reversed in 1951 with the appearance of IRS pamphlet B74c218, "The Sensuous Taxpayer...
...and finally, Keaton and Hurt's men, respectively a novelist (Richard Jordan) and a radical filmmaker (Sam Waterston...
...THE TALKIES by Ben Yagoda Woody Allen's Interiors All of these things are said in Woody Allen's new movie, Interiors: "An enormous abyss opened up beneath our feet...
...Pericles the Younger, son of the better-known statesman and orator, discovered that taxes were too high...
...It is under the influence of these publications that the government's revenue curve has come to resemble a large breast...
...On the wall of his cave appear two arrows, each pointing upward, though at different angles...
...The requisite quota would be filled...
...Keaton struggles with writer's blockand resents Hurt's relationship with Marshall...
...He flourished shortly before the withdrawal of the glaciers...
...Hurt agonizes over her career, gets pregnant to her dismay, and resents Keaton's relationship with Page...
...One day I asked one of the HUD bigwigs how many blacks, whites, Asians, etc., they had working at HUD...
...The Church continued to make new converts, especially in Ireland, which had not yet become a tax haven for tax exiles...
...He told me that it was compiled by "visual survey...
...Probably it was the veal-parmigian incident...
...Or was it the other way 'round...
...The man at the other end, Chester McGuire, an Assistant Secretary, came right back with the answer: 1,127 black males, 2,241 black females, 4,086 "non-minority" females, and so on...
...It is to Taxitus that we owe the famous geometric representation of the tendency of taxes to treble—the Taxitus Trapezoid...
...I was impressed by this display, until on my way home I pondered this elementary question: How did they know how many blacks and whites they had...
...It remained for Rene Descartes to link tax policy with ontology...
...A few months ago I had lunch with Mr...
...Then he grinned...
...Gleason looked at me rather dubiously, until I explained in further detail...
...He formed a small consulting firm, Attic Analysis...
...Aristotle, still clinging to his notion of the golden mean, thought taxes were about right...
...The Times "embarrassed" the FBI, so everyone was happy, except perhaps the poor readers, who, with the Times now on strike, have no doubt turned with a sigh of relief to the Village Voice as an alternative...
...But did that mean that no one was...
...Grossenpaer stressed that there was no way out, a grim conclusion that gave rise to the famous emblem of the economics department of Goettingen University, "Taxel's Triangle...
...If so, what did the committee hope to get out of it...
...On the whole, a soap would be preThe American Spectator October 1978 29...
...Taxitus' achievements were all the more impressive in that he had to work with Roman numerals...
...All of Bismarck's economic advisors studied there...
...The government has therefore presumably concluded, and no doubt wisely, that it must accept racial self-definition if there are not to be race review courts...
...Not only does the plot consist of these pieces of melodrama, but it is advanced precisely in the manner of "Another World": People are forever exchanging cups of coffee and meaningful glances, there are awkward and sudden transitions between topics of soul-baring, and Keaton and Hurt are constantly being asked "How's Frederick...
...The era is rightfully known as the Dark Ages...
...At that point he could write back to Eleanor Holmes Norton of the EEOC and "declare a victory...
...Such was Aristotle's prestige thattaxes remained high throughout medieval and Renaissance times, until the Enlightenment...
...I'm overwhelmed with feelings about life...
Vol. 11 • October 1978 • No. 10
