The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-01-25
LIBERTY BOND
LESSONS
By HOWARD SPEER
OF Hincks Bros. & Co.
LESSON NO. 81
PAYING THE BILLS

tlm1d ones we just touched upon how
Uncle Sam could go about raising
enough money to pay his debts. We
want to drive home this matter of
paying bills so that you will thor
oughly understand where the money
is going to come from to pay off Lib
erty Bonds
It is easy enough to see how it
works out in your individual case.
You yourself, or somebody in the
family, works for a living. You get
paid You take the money and pay
your rent, grocery, gas, clothing, and
doctor bills. There isn't anything
hard to understand about the pro-
cess.
But the government! The govern
ment doesn't work. What is the gov
eminent anyhow? Is it thing or is
it person, and ought we to say
'Who is the government" 1t certain
ly isn't the President. He is a very
important person, but he isn't the
government. That is easily proved
by the fact that lots of things become
law that the President doesn't ap.
pAON0' IL 1871 Tie OdDlASI. hui Tie
Senate, nor the House, nor the Su-
preme Court, because each of these
bodies does things that the others
have nothing to do with. 1t GER
tainly isn't the White House, nor the
capitol, nor even the Treasury build
ing, even though they did put a big
picture of it on the Liberty Bond
posters.
Maybe IT'S the Presidents wife!
The wife is the govRament in most
homes so maybe she is in Uncle
Sans. Perhaps we shall have to get
the Secret Service to find out just
who or what this government is and
also its present post Office address and
apparent means of livelihood.
That means of livelihood" is the
thing that most concerns US Liberty
Bond holders because the govern
ment owes us money and we are very
| much interested in how it is going to
| pay.
Suppose we turn from the individ-
| ua1 to the group and see how the
group pays the bills. Take the club
or the lodge or the church. Each of
| these organizations collects from its
|
| How about the city? Well, every
body knows that the word taxes" is
! the answer Are the taxes always the
same? Ask any property owner and
hear him rave about how much more
it costs him today to own house
than it did ten years ago. When the
city needs money it raises the taxes.
| Or if it needs a great deal more all
at once it sells bonds and pays the
interest on them by slightly higher
tax over period of years.
The county? Yes. the county has
bills to pay and it, too. knows how
| to sell bonds and to levy and collect
taxes.
Then comes the state. Most de-
cidedly it has bills Who pays for the
state roads and for the uniforms of
the Home Guard and for its meals
and compensation when they are do
ing duty as they did the other night?
The state does and it gets the money
by taxes.
So it seems that there was a good
deal of ground for the old saying that
there is nothing certain except death
and taxes. Taxes are the universal
method of raising money to pay bills.
You see it in the state, county, city
and club. The inhabitants or the
members are assessed enough to meet
the running expenses. We even use
the word about our own individual
work when we speak of it as taxing
our strength, or taxing our ability.
And so our wages-the money we
raise by our work-are the direct re-
n11T-
selves by ourselves.
Now the national government has
no patented way of getting money to
pay it's bills. It has a great many
resources to draw from. but the
money must be raised in the same old
way-taxation, either directly or in
directly.
The newspapers are full of the in
come tax these days. That is just
one of the tax methods the govern
ment is using to increase its funds
and so help to pay the war bills. You
pay three cents to send a letter out
of town. That is another tax. Il
costs you II cents instead of 10 to
go to the movies. Taxation again.
Most of this extra taxation is going
to pay current bills. There isn't much
being saved up for a rainy day in
times like these. you may depend or
that. But you may also depend on il
that the people of 1912 and 1947 are
not going to be called upon all of g
: sudden to pay up these five and a hall
billion of first and second Liberty
Bonds. This government, whoever
or whatever it is, is quite too thrifty
, for that. Long before those bonds
come due it will have bought in hun
dreds of millions of dollars worth OF
them out of the little sums that all OF
us will have been paying as take:
[ through the years to come.
, So if you have held on to your bono
all that time you'll find that the
l money is ready and waiting to pay i
off. For you have probably noticed
that somehow or other, in spite O.
/ our grumbling about those two ole
arch enemies of the human race
death and taxes, nobody has eve
beaten the first or escaped the sec
q ond. Taxes come hard at times, bu
we pay them just the same, and, afte
all, it's rather a comfortable feeling
r to know that the bills always hav'
been paid and the outlook is that the.
always will.