PAYING WAR COSTS BY TAXES
Pinchot, Amos
Paying War Costs By Taxes Some Hard Facts and Plain Talk About the Just Distribution of the Vast Financial Burden of the War By AMOS PINCHOT IT IS hard to make Americans think—harder, in fact,...
...Accordingly we see that property has become the only sacred thing which the country may not demand of the rich...
...We will pay with bonds...
...The question is whether it will come out of the pockets of people who can afford to pay or out of the pockets of those who cannot...
...In America, public opinion does not exist—it is considered unpatriotic...
...Their officeholders, from Poundmpster to President, are their servants,—their hired men, selected and paid by them to protect the majority's interests...
...This money will not come out of the air...
...They will sacrifice even life itself more willingly than they will give up their guarantees of financial power...
...Already England has a tax of 80 per cent on all net profits over and above the pre-war average...
...Under its provisions, a married man (without a family) who has a net income of $50,000 a year, pays an income tax of $5,180...
...It is the way all wars have been financed, and anyone who disagrees is a pro-German, is disturber of the peace, a demagogue...
...We have trusted American thought...
...Congress is going to redraft the" Revenue Bill...
...It has its weak spots...
...Is this a case of equal sacrifice, or is it a case of appalling sacrifice for the poor man and little or none for the rich man...
...We have gone on the principle that the rjovernment, the big newspapers, the bankers, the dissatisfied politicians and silk-stocking patriotic societies should do our thinking and talking for us...
...But when conscription of property is proposed, a shriek goes up that can be heard from coast to coast...
...Congress has passed an income and excess profits tax that can not be collected, because it is too complicated...
...And the bonds will be redeemed by taxes on the poor...
...jTJUT there is no use talking about these things unless we do something about it...
...We must thank God that the rich are willing to pay anything at all...
...This will be the war monument of American plutocracy and of the Congress that obeyed it long after the war itself is over...
...It will come out of somebody's pockets...
...And this they >.r.ve done with such extraordinary thoroughness that today it is almost lese majesty for an ordinary American citizen to speak his own opinions or even to have any...
...There is a strange thing about rich people in America—perhaps everywhere...
...It's Time to Act...
...Why out of the poor man's pocket of course...
...In the case of the corporation mentioned by me, the profits tax in England would be $344,000 instead of the $154,200 collected by our Revenue Bill (if, indeed it can be collected at all...
...We have shirked our responsibilities...
...The estimate of twenty thousand millions for the war's first year has turned out to be far below what it will actually cost...
...he keeps the remaining $44,820...
...Under its provisions a million dollar corporation which netted $70,000 a year before the war, and which now nets $500,-000, pays a tax of $154,200, and keeps the remaining $345,800...
...Heine cynically observed, "Revolutions do not occur in Germany—they are forbidden...
...In fact, there are many patriotic Congressmen and Senators who will fight for a fair revenue bill, if the public will back them up...
...The people of England, however, have not gaped in open-mouthed silence and let the great and wise write their tax laws...
...And Congress is not an impregnable fortress of privilege...
...But the corporation or individual, whose incomes and profits are taxed, gets only a tax receipt...
...How They Put It Over AND YET the American people have looked on in silence...
...That is the way to finance the war...
...Up to the present time, practically the only people who have been heard on the subject of paying for the war, have been the Tories, the bankers, the agents of the corporations, in fact, the people who are making money out of the war, and, at the same time, escaping a fair share of taxation...
...According to an estimate of experts, bas-ad on quarterly reports, American corporations will make in our first year of the war in excess profits alone, over and above their pre-war average earnings, at least $3,600,000,000—an inconceivable sum, piled up by the labor of the fighting and producing classes, and from the necessity of our allies...
...While liberal opinion has been threatened, suppressed, prosecuted and sometimes jailed into silence, the reactionaries have held the floor...
...How shall we pay for the war...
...All well and good...
...There nothing unpatriotic about demanding a fair distribution of the war's burdens...
...If it could be collected, it would still be both unjust and inadequate...
...People Should Awake...
...Here we must not ask for just taxes...
...For property is not merely the convenient possession of the individual in the privileged class, it is the rock-bottom foundation of the class itself...
...Is this bearing a fair share of the war's privations and sufferings ? Compare the sacrifice made by the $50,000 a year man and the $500,000 a year corporation with that of the poor man, to whose family war has meant hunger, cold, closed schools, sickness, doctor's bills and debt...
...In England the amount of net earnings this corporation would be allowed to keep would bo $156,000, instead of the $345,800 conceded to wealth by our generous legislators...
...But in the United States it is different...
...The purchaser of a bond becomes a patriot and gets a safe four per cent investment...
...If every man and woman who reads this would write to Washington to his Congressman and Senator (and get his friends to do likewise) demanding a pledge that they will openly fight for income and excess profits taxes that will ga at least as far as the English ones, it would give our legislators something to think about, and get them into a more healthy frame of mind...
...We, the American public, have gone along through the first year of the war without thinking...
...Only the millionaires, the bankers, politicians, profiteers and big newspapers that represent them, have discussed taxes...
...Just at present, there should be more fearless thought and action by all Americans...
...We have been told by our trustees of public opinion, that to talk about taxing wealth would be unpatriotic...
...They have passed a substantial and workable set of tax laws, and are preparing to proceed to confiscation of capital in the near future...
...Nor have they stood like cows waiting to be milked while the profiteers approached with the stool and pail...
...Therefore war bonds are sacred institutions, and war taxes are anathema...
...Pay For the War WS HAVE got to raise colossal sums to pay for the war...
...We have not dared to speak...
...That means this corporation makes almost 400 per cent more than it did in normal times...
...Touch property, and the control of the country by a small and organized minority becomes a thing of the past...
...IT IS time for Americans to wake up...
...The British Labor Party is not bashful about making its wishes known...
...It states them in no whispered tones, and Parliament and the Cabinet listen most attentively...
...You cannot raise twenty billions of dollars by taxation alone...
...Naturally the capitalists prefer to have the war financed by bonds rather than by taxes or confiscation...
...but you can raise a large part of that sum by taxes, and, in addition to taxes, by direct confiscation of capital, as the British cabinet now proposes...
...Uncle Sam may draft the sons of the privileged class...
...Some of them have already done so, but they need the public's support...
...Of course, we have to have war bonds...
...We aave allowed our guardians to discourage all opinion other than their own...
...and the class instinct protects it more jealously than anything else...
...If you, the people of America, would demand from your governmental employes half the obedience that your capitalistic employers demand of you, there would be no trouble in making the rich pay their fair share of this war.—The Farmer's Open Forum, February, 1918...
...They should remember that this is a democracy and that they are citizens, not subjects...
...Paying War Costs By Taxes Some Hard Facts and Plain Talk About the Just Distribution of the Vast Financial Burden of the War By AMOS PINCHOT IT IS hard to make Americans think—harder, in fact, than to get them to give their tiine, their money...
Vol. 10 • March 1918 • No. 3
