Vagabond Editoriafs

By Jack Dionne

Vacation time. Vagabond season. When every man de_ velops a sort of nameless yen to go somewhere else and do somethingdifferent.

My own ambition right this minute is to go away back a hundred or so miles from nowhere; somewhere where the air is clean and fresh, where there are fish hungry for the hook, good horses to be ridden, long days for resting and forgetting, long nights for sleep, no telephones, no radio, no newspapers, no news, and only a return trip ticket dated the last of November.

pouldn't that be a grand and*glorious feeling?

They say every mai should try and take a vacation as nearly as possible the opposite of his regular routine. Then, I imagine, the members of our House of Congress should go about during their vacation saying .,No ! No ! No !',

I guess we'll just have to get through this mad political period of the next five months like we got through the past six years of depression; by laughing it off. As a matter of fact, those who laughed are those who lived through it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said:

"Away with funeral music

Set the pipe to powerful lips

The cup of life's to him that drinks

And not to him that sips."

And, since we have -"J"u loi oo".r" and philosophical, f am reminded of a four liner by Rebecca McCann. that breathes the breath of truth:

"It's not the things I fail to do

That makes me wipe this eye;

It's things I should and could have done

And simply failed to, try.,'***

Twisting rapidly from the sublime to the serious I change the subject to a very disagreeable one-taxes. I do so be_ cause f continue to believe that here is one of the most serious of subjects, and one of the least understood even by those who mouth it most. f am looking at a question in print that reads-.,Who pays taxes?" The State Cham_ ber of Commerce of California asks the question, and then proceeds to do some answering in interesting fashion.

This organization has assembled some figures that per_ tain to California, but apply to every other state as well. California has a state income tax law and therefore has available figures not attainable in all districts. The people of California last year paid about 9900,000,000 in Federal, State, and local taxes. The cry we hear so much of nowadays is "Tax the Rich." The "rich" in California, which in this case means all those who make incomes of $5,000 or over, have a total income of 320,00O,00'0. Suppose the tax man demands and collects half o,f all they make. That just makes $160,000,000, and still leaves $740,000,000 that the poor people have got .: n:t..

I have said in this column many times before, and will continue to say in the future-"The rich do NOT pay taxes; they COLLECT them." The only possible way you can put a heavy burden of taxation on the rich is via the income tax route. Any other route is wide open to a transfer of the tax to the ultimate consumer. The income tax route DOES catch him. But long years ago the wisest man who cver wrote on this subi^ct. \fa. -' ;th, who wrote .,The Wealth of Nations," warned tax makers of the pertinent and provable fact whenever a tax reaches an altitude too high to be reasonable it defeats its own purpose by invoking the law of diminishing returns. ***

Tax a man in reasonable manner, and he will pay it and continue to make money. Tax him to a point where he is simply working for the tax collector, and he quits trying. And that means injury to industry and additional unemployment. Keeping money and men employed is our problem.

The indirect tax is the tax that catches the poor man. The poor man generally objects violently to the assessment of a sales tax, because it is a tax he pays directly, AND THEREFORE FEELS DIRECTLY, and he says it is a tax on poverty. He buys a gallon of gasoline and pays the highest tax on earth and never grumbles. The price of 17 cents a gallon seems fair. If the salesman said to him, "The gasoline is twelve cents and the tax is five cents," he would raise Hades. The indirect tax is the one that grinds, but the payer doesn't know it. ***

All taxes, almost without exception, that are assessed upon industry, are added to the cost of the product and collected from the consumer. The man who owns no property and whose income is below the tax level thinks he pays no taxes. But in reality in the long run he is the BIG tax payer. The money we have been spending in this country in the past three years; the millions that have been broadcast and the billions that have been distributed will all be paid for in TAXES; AND THE INDIRECT TAX WILL PAY THE HUGE MAJORITY OF IT. Everv pair of shoe-strings, every loaf of bread, and every pair of overalls bought in this country for the next one hundred years is going to carry its share of that load. And the man who tries to tell you differently is shouting down a well'

* r< x

During the last week of the last session of Congress they passed the new tax bill, assessing a special tax on undivided surplus. I read figures the other day showing that during the years of the present depression industry dug into its pockets and paid out of surplus something like twenty-six billions of dollars to keep going, keep the wheels turning, and keep millions of men employed during years when there were no earnings with which to pay them. If we forbid the creation of surpluses via the tax route, what will be the protection of industry and labor when trouble comes again? What will we do when the next depression comes along? What would have happened during the past six years had industry not had the twenty-six billions piled up to keep business going and their men employed?