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...
...I'm feeling good about myself' ' ; "I suddenly became hyperaware of my body...
...I can't seem to shake the real implications of dying...
...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...
...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...
...People will be allowed to be whatever race they claim to be...
...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...
...Probably it was the veal-parmigian incident...
...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...
...Little progress was made until Greek times...
...The problems of affirmative action programs disappear once this is perceived...
...He flourished shortly before the withdrawal of the glaciers...
...But did that mean that no one was...
...Meanwhile, as St...
...his wife (Geraldine Page), a decorator whose craziness leads her to become his ex-wife...
...Soon, people lost interest in paying taxes altogether, and government revenues declined...
...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...
...It is under the influence of these publications that the government's revenue curve has come to resemble a large breast...
...In the course of the film Stapleton tries to commit suicide twice (successfully the second time...
...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...
...This might seem like a regressive step...
...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...
...It remained for Rene Descartes to link tax policy with ontology...
...The early Church Fathers were unanimously opposed to usury, so interest rates were low...
...Taxes are high, productivity declines, and government is bigger than ever...
...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...
...The Doge established the world's first sinking fund for the retirement of the public debt...
...The requisite quota would be filled...
...The results make one wonder if he was really kidding before...
...There is an attorney (E.G...
...The era is rightfully known as the Dark Ages...
...Arabic numerals remained unknown, so it was impossible to construct econometric models...
...The request was turned down...
...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...
...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...
...All of the above gems are solemnly uttered, accorded the utmost respect by writer/ director Allen...
...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...
...in a feeble attempt to keep things moving...
...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...
...Lear...
...This point was wholly lost on British socialists, whose reputations were saved by the fortunate intervention of the Great Depression...
...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...
...If you think this sounds like a soap opera, you have put your finger on the pulse of the film...
...28 The American Spectator October 1978 It was better in the Renaissance...
...Keaton struggles with writer's blockand resents Hurt's relationship with Marshall...
...Accordingly, IX-percent inflation was considered acceptable in those days...
...Gleason looked at me rather dubiously, until I explained in further detail...
...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...
...I called the Civil Service Commission and asked someone there how the various departments obtained this information...
...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...
...This is the key point in my argument...
...This tendency was excoriated by the Roman economic theorist, Taxitus...
...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...
...A great debate ensued...
...Its leader was Minimillian Taxpierre, who claimed to speak for all oppressed taxpierres...
...Nonetheless, no one has learned anything from the history of Western civilization...
...I pay, therefore I am," wrote the great French thinker...
...Is it because I hated my father...
...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...
...In Roman times, the collapse of the Republic had led to no end of fiscal disorder...
...He told me that it was compiled by "visual survey...
...Interiors is about a wealthy New York family reminiscent of Salinger's Glasses, though brought up to date and deprived of their wit...
...At that point he could write back to Eleanor Holmes Norton of the EEOC and "declare a victory...
...He hit upon the idea of tax deductions for charitable contributions, and the arts flourished...
...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...
...He and his partners would go to the Agora at lunchtime to argue with Aristotle...
...Earlier on I had spent some rather fruitless hours in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's grim headquarters...
...There is no genetic test whereby blacks can unequivocally be distinguished from whites (as there is, of course, with men and women...
...Government spending continued to rise...
...and finally, Keaton and Hurt's men, respectively a novelist (Richard Jordan) and a radical filmmaker (Sam Waterston...
...The trend was reversed in 1951 with the appearance of IRS pamphlet B74c218, "The Sensuous Taxpayer...
...Such was Aristotle's prestige thattaxes remained high throughout medieval and Renaissance times, until the Enlightenment...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Trade expanded, but defense expenditures rose to counter the Hun military build-up...
...Increasing thoughts about death just seemed to come over me...these feelings of futility in relation to my work...
...Everyone agreed that no one had, therefore no one paid...
...All of Bismarck's economic advisors studied there...
...But Interiors is no comedy: Wait as we may for the gaglines, they never come...
...But as soon as graphs could be drawn, the plight of the overtaxed citizenry became plain to see...
...her replacement (Maureen Stapleton...
...A few months ago I had lunch with Mr...
...Perhaps to ward off this impression, the man told me that the Civil Service Commission will accept "racial self-identification...
...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...
...and "How's Richard...
...Marshall...
...Without it, man could not draw graphs...
...Pericles the Younger, son of the better-known statesman and orator, discovered that taxes were too high...
...There would have been double-digit inflation, except that Arabic numerals were still not in wide use and digits, as such, were unknown...
...Aristotle, still clinging to his notion of the golden mean, thought taxes were about right...
...Jordan struggles with his drinking, his literary failure, and—in an embarrassing rape scene—his sister-in-law Griffith...
...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...
...the intimacy of it embarrasses me...
...All I can say is that things were different when I was a boy...
...Thank God Rene had wit enough to invent analytic geometry...
...It led to the first taxpayers' revolt, sometimes called the French Revolution...
...Well, what was it doing in his wallet...
...If so, what did the committee hope to get out of it...
...I'm overwhelmed with feelings about life...
...The House Assassinations Committee, which has been "pursuing" the Byers story, almost certainly leaked it to the Times...
...Then he grinned...
...My own anger scares me...
...He picked up a phone at his elbow and shot the question across to someone else...
...a poetess (Diane Keaton), an actress/photographer/ editor/ copywriter (Marybeth Hurt), and another actress (Kristin Griffith...
...Which is no doubt why James Gleason grinned...
...Therefore, the only way "racial self-identification" could be challenged would be, again, by some kind of "visual survey...
...On the wall of his cave appear two arrows, each pointing upward, though at different angles...
...Taxilio Reducio was then in his ascendency as fiscal advisor to the Doge of Venice...
...He formed a small consulting firm, Attic Analysis...
...A perennial best-seller since, "The Sensuous Taxpayer" paved the way for a whole series of bawdy, do-it-yourself tax guides...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...James Gleason, county executive of Montgomery County...
...It is to Taxitus that we owe the famous geometric representation of the tendency of taxes to treble—the Taxitus Trapezoid...
...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...
...Hurt agonizes over her career, gets pregnant to her dismay, and resents Keaton's relationship with Page...
...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...
...Civil service application forms do not query race...
...On the whole, a soap would be preThe American Spectator October 1978 29...
...three daughters (Chekhov...
...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...
...Taxitus' achievements were all the more impressive in that he had to work with Roman numerals...
...Or was it the other way 'round...
Vol. 11 • October 1978 • No. 10
