Quote from IGM 270:
Taxation: No federal income tax. Excise and tariffs only federal taxes. States funded by state taxes. No social engineering with federal tax laws.
With the above how would you pay for the military and interstate highway system? Do you believe in doing away with the federally funded school lunch programs or would that be state funded?
GuzziJohn
The Federal Income Tax did not exist prior to 1913 when the 16th Amendment was ratified. I think there was a federal income tax during the civil war, but other than that there was no federal income tax. In the pre income tax era, the military was funded by revenue from tariffs collected at customs houses.
If you study the history of the 1880's, there were intense debates over how to deal with the huge surpluses generated by the tariff and ultimately the tariff rates were lowered. The post civil war period was one of huge economic expansion and growth, and I mean real economic growth in terms of the steel industry, rail roads, agricultural surpluses, electricity, telephone, telegraph, automobiles, and ultimately aviation and space travel.
The interstate highway system could be funded by tolls, and/or assessments against individual states based on the numbers of miles of highway in an individual state. During the 1800's we had government funded canals that were instrumental in the development of the country. I think the issue of funding legitimate government functions can be solved without the oppressive KGB like income tax system that so powerfully dominates our lives at every level.
As for school lunches, they should be abolished or funded at the state level. The Federal Government should not be involved in this kind of thing. The Dept. of Education should be abolished. It's worthless and merely a tool of enforcing rigid political and ideological conformity in school administration and curricula. Joe Sobran gave a talk some years ago and commented on the sad state of public education since the Federal Government began to exercise "oversight", as follows: "
In the last 100 years we've gone from teaching Greek and Latin in public schools to teaching remedial English in College."
I went to public schools in the 1950's-1960's in Virginia, Texas, Arizona, California (San Diego, Los Angeles, Cupertino), Nevada, Washington and in Toronto Canada. (My father's employment was military related and we re-located many times.) The quality of state funded, state operated public education was outstanding. In all of those schools all over the country, I never had an incompetent teacher and all of my teachers were gracious, kind, classy, well-groomed and well spoken people. Among all the groups of professional people I've ever encountered, including Doctors, Lawyers, Police Judges, Accountants, corporate executives, the only single group about which I can say I never encountered a single bad apple was public school teachers in my youth. I know public school teachers and parents of children abused by Marxist public school teachers today and some of the things I've seen simply leave me reeling. Something terrible happened to our country in the 1960's and I fear it is irreversible.
