Vagabond Editorials

(Continued from Page 7 ) at a flat place on the highway where it seems safe to say"Things are normal again"-ws will unite our most intelligent and vigorous efforts to securing tax reductions; steady, continuous tax reductions. For mad taxation threatens our very existence, my masters ! It will require concentrated intelligence when times react again to destroy this hydra-headed rnonster-abnormal, unwise, vicious taxation.

A wild orgy of gouurrrrnlr,,"r r*,r, has bradded upon the wrists and ankles of this entire nation shackles of taxation that will require decades to eliminate. Right now, apparently, we must increase them. But let us hold in the forefront of our thought, to be started into effectiveness the moment conditions justify, the determination to cast off these manacles, and become free again. May Providence send some wise and strong emancipator to lead the nation's thinking in this' direction ! When the American farmer arrives at the point where every time he sells four pigs he pays one of them to the Government for taxes-the time for crying a halt has manifestly arrived. There is nothing ure can do about it at this moment. \ille are now trying to find our way out of the labyrinth of depression. Apparently we must pay our way out-in taxes. For the moment we are shackled. But the future is ours. Let us pray that we use it wisely. **

Personally I've always been a strong advocate of a sales tax. It seems to me the most just and painless form of collecting needed revenue. As an example of how painlessly it works, consider the gasoline tax. The average person never realizes when he buys gasoline what a huge tax bill he has just paid. He pays it painlessly. And generally and in many states the gasoline tax amounts to from 100% to 300% of. the wholesale price of the commodity itself. We pay that without squealing; and then when someone proposes a 2To tax on general sales, we scream to high heaven. We could put on a conservative sales tax, balance our budget, and none of us be particularly conscious that we have paid a tax. It works that way.