In the years leading up to the ratification of the 16th Amendment, a great many assurances were needed to convince American voters to give the federal government a power the founders had explicitly forbade.
Tax freedoms were critical in preventing any U.S. government from imposing serfdom-like lives on its citizens. Direct taxes, in particular, were viewed as the most threatening, and since the most accountable government is that closest to the people, that type of taxation was reserved only to the states in Article 1 of the Constitution.
By the early 20th century, Congress had long been champing at the bit for the vast sums an income tax could collect from a fast-growing national population, but even crafty legislation seeking to disguise direct taxes kept getting struck down by the Supreme Court.
An amendment to Article 1 was necessary, and proposed in 1909. Congress, as direct beneficiary, was overwhelmingly supportive. But how to convince the electorate, as coerced contributors, in three-fourths of the states? It wouldn't be easy to get a super-majority of state populations to toss the founders' wisdom out the window.
Enter the ancient philosophical premises of popular achievement by exploitation of discontent, discord and disunity.
Social resentment over the super-wealthy industrialists was still riding high, and many Americans were fine with the idea of making the rich pay more taxes. Trust-busting efforts had stoked class envy, and by positioning the 16th Amendment as a tax only on the very rich, proponents tapped into populist senses of fairness and justice.
At the same time, getting a large percentage of constitutionally conservative voters on board meant keeping the scale of the concession small. Low rates, especially at the bottom of the scale (where aspiring middle-class citizens might imagine themselves), were vital as part of the trusty inch-mile strategem.
The amendment itself authorized the whole mile--it entirely altered the principle. But Congress only sought an itty-bitty inch, and even then only from those rolling opulently in more money than they could ever possibly spend. The income-tax target, proponents all promised, would be Easy Street, not Main Street.
The original math was persuasive. (I'm using 2018 dollars in all figures for relevance.) The top rate, the most anyone would have to pay, was a modest 7 percent. The only people who could reach that threshold had to exceed the stratospheric income figure of $12.7 million. The lowest rate, 1 percent, didn't apply to incomes below $76,000, and extended all the way up to $500,000.
Income-tax advocates had also pledged very liberal deductions and exemptions, which resulted in only 1 percent of Americans paying any income tax at all the first year.
Once released from constitutional banishment, raising income taxes proved as natural as breathing for politicians. It took only three years to double the top rate, but with a corollary compromise: The top bracket was pushed up to the princely annual income of $50.7 million.
If you're wondering how many Americans today would qualify for the 1916 top rate based on wages alone, the answer is 205.
That's why the inch, which sounded reasonable and sensible and even corrective, was always a pretext. And why the socialist, soak-the-rich rhetoric now swirling in a media frenzy of progressive era déjà vu is the same old subterfuge.
We must resist the inch's emotional appeal, and require the true cost analysis of the mile before approving.
Within 10 years of the "rich only pay" basis for ratification, the 16th Amendment's progeny had tripled the base rate tax, reduced the top rate threshold by 90 percent, and increased the maximum tax rate by 600 percent.
Medicare is another page from the same chicanery chapter. In 1966, Americans were asked to only fund a $3 billion program to provide health care for the elderly. Skeptics were assured the cost would be kept in check, growing to only $12 billion in 1990.
An easy inch for a good cause. Why not?
But by 1990, the Medicare program cost was $107 billion. Last year, its tab was $583 billion.
Though early 1900s socialism is enjoying a political revival, most of the progressive legislative wish list goals--minimum wage, overtime regulations, workers' compensation, child labor, safety requirements--have been on the books for decades.
Modern socialist sympathizers sport a rickety roster of reform ideas, bolstered by one-sided intolerance and, increasingly, expletive expressiveness.
"If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen," Progressive Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt said in a speech in 1910, it would be that "whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other."
TR said he had "small use" for the public servant who attacked and denounced the capitalist but could never muster a critical word about lawless mob violence.
He ended that speech noting an immutable principle that predicates progressive success on the "moral awakening" of the population: average men and women who are honest, sound in judgment, and bring their children up well.
"Without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything," is how he put it.
Well said, and better heeded.
------------v------------
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 02/01/2019