Quote Of The Day

"Economists in the ancien regime believed that the best medicine to cure poverty was heavy taxation. Indeed, the poorer a region, the heavier it should be taxed. Increased taxation, said these experts, would increase productivity and benefit everyone; consequently, taxes were the appropriate tool to combat poverty. The poor were like grass - the more they were cut down, the stronger they would become. We should not ridicule this logic to severely. In 1947, the U.S. Treasury espoused this idea to justify high progressive peacetime taxes. In the nineteenth century the dogma of the rich and powerful was Social Darwinism. Nature's survival of the fittest meant that the strong and rich could abuse the poor - this was nature's intent. At the same time the Marxist taught that the extermination of the capital class would bring Utopia for oppressed workers."

For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization; Charles Adams. p.231.

I think I may be pulling a couple more from this book.