Founding Fathers on Spreading the Wealth

[ErikJ]

'Spreading the wealth' is nothing new to U.S.
Dean Calbreath, San Diego Tribune October 26, 2008
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But is it really socialism to talk of “spreading the wealth”?

Actually, it has been part of the American economic system since its founding.

In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce “the enormous inequality” between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of “silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

Madison later spoke in favor of using laws to “reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity (meaning the middle) and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”

During the early days of the republic, the government relied mostly on tariffs to collect revenue, under the theory that since the rich bought most of the imports, they would pay most of the taxes.
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http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/business/calbreath/20081026-9999-1b26dean.html

[Viva_Daddy]

1. Thank God Mitt Romney was not one of our Founding Fathers.

[Care Acutely]

2. Nice find. Does anyone know if these original letters and works are published somewhere

that would make them easy to link to? I'd love to have them as backup ammo. I'd love to have them to parcel out bit by bit on Facebook too.

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. I did find this:

http://www.constitution.org/jm/17920123_parties.txt

National Gazette, January 23, 1792



In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of
them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities
from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation
of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a
state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the
expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated.

If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism. In all political societies, different interests and parties arise out of the
nature of things, and the great art of politicians lies in making them checks and balances to each other. Let us then increase these natural
distinctions by favoring an inequality of property; and let us add to them artificial distinctions, by establishing kings, and nobles, and plebeians.

We shall then have the more checks to oppose to each other: we shall then have the more scales and the more weights to perfect and maintain the
equilibrium. This is as little the voice of reason, as it is that of republicanism.

From the expediency, in politics, of making natural parties, mutual checks on each other, to infer the propriety of creating artificial parties, in
order to form them into mutual checks, is not less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say, that new vices ought to be promoted, where they would
counteract each other, because this use may be made of existing vices....

[Omaha Steve]

4. K&R!