New-York tribune., 1918-07-24
Hateful Truth

Almost we despair of ever getting true
economic thought past the emotional bar
riers.
We have tried very hard to state our
views of war taxation clearly. We are
for taxing incomes and excess war profits
that is to say wealth and property-to
the utmost limit. We do not know what
the practical limit is. Nobody knows.
You have to find it by feeling for it. In
theory it is the point at which your
treatment Of the goose begins to dimin-
ish the size of the golden eggs. At all
events. we have urged higher taxes upon
incomes and war profits, especially the
latter, than Congress has yet had the
courage to impose.
But that is not all. Having stated
our opinion of what should be done to
the rich, and having stated that first,
we go on to say that very drastic taxes
must be laid upon the luxuries of all the
people--upon tea and coffee and tobacco
and beer and sugar and gasoene, and
everything that is either not essential to
existence or which, being essential, is
known to be enormously wasted by self
indulgence.
These are the so-called consumption
taxes. They serve two very important
uses, namely % to yield revenue and
CD to penalize popular extravaganza, of
which evidence everywhere abounds.
No sooner have we written and printed
an editorial like that than we get letters
from people who seem TO have read
everything in it about taxing the people
and nothing at all about taxing the rich.
We know by this and other signs that
two very dangerous and absurd falla-
cies are abroad.
One is that the rich as such are slack
ers and profiteers, and not only do not
pay their share, but actually fatten on
the war.
The other is that If wealth we're con-
scripted as life is the poor would not
have to pay anything.
The first fallacy is dangerous because
it appeals-and is often with disloyal
motives intended to appeal-to class
prejudice. 1t isn't true. There are rich
slackers and poor slackers rich profit
eers and poor profteers. If you wish
to call them such the profteers are the
spectators, the land owners, the plant
ers, the farmers, the wage workers in all
the favored lines, the mddlemen. the
retailers and all everywhere who are
gaining more and consuming more than
they were gaining and consuming a year
and half ago. Hoover says that if the
consumption of food by 11O,000,O0O
Americans would only go back to what it
was before the war the problem of feed
ing the Allies out Of the surplus would
be instantly solved. There is passionate
denunclatlon of the millers and packers
for making more. There is no passion
at all in the thought that people have
been eating more and richer food
meaning by people all of u.s.
AS to the other falacy, that if wealth
were conscripted the war would be pain
lessly paid for, the answer to that is
Russia.
Wealth has been conscripted in Rus
sia, and Russia this winter will die if the
Allies do not save her.
Did wealth flee?
Did it engage in reprisals?
Is it having its revenge?
Not at all--not any Of that. Wealth
is not what the Boshevist thinks it is.
You can tax what rises from wealth.
the profit, the usufruct, whatever YOU
call it--down to the very minimum of
the air and nourishment required to sus-
tain its life; but if you reach for the
source of the egg you kill the goose.
You may stamp and rage, but the goose
is cold and oblivious
Russia is full of factories and shops
and mills and banks with their doors
closed. They are dead geese To the
simple Russian, beguiled and deceived by
the Bolshevk leaders, it must seem very
strange. There is the factory. In it
are the machines as before. Here is
labor, idle, staring and hungry. The
Russian people want what the factory
used to make.
What is the matter? What has hap
pened?
Wealth has been conscripted. That is
all. The goose is dead.
Only people who know the uses and
nature of wealth and how to manage it
could conceivably conscript it without
fatal consequences. And if people do