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Show Published Every Saturday I! BY GOODWINS WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO.',1 INC. A.W.RAYBOULD, BUSINESS MANAGER . , SUBSCRIPTION PRICE; n , . .. .. J . , .nen ? $1.50 for six months.' Subscriptions' to all foreign countries,1 within the Postal I Union, $4.50 , per year. . , ft ' Payments should be made by. Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, to The Citizen. i ; payable ..fit Address all. communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas-s matter, June 21, 1919, at the postofflce at 8alt Lake , 3. 1879. Aet under th. , City. UUh, ! Salt Lake City, Utah . . J ; : 4 it .f-Mare- h M ! .1 : YOU MUST PAY SOME DA Y A timely editorial appears in the Philadelphia Public Ledger giving some reasons for our higher taxation aiid why. The Ledger says: The National Industrial Conference Board has been trying to find where the money of the public goes. It has found where $15 of every $100 of the American national income went in 1923. Governments got it. Washington departments, bureaus and agencies got $3,459,000,000 of it. State governments accounted for $1,500,000,000. Local governments, county, municipal and township, got and spent $5,136,000,000. Had every man, woman and child in America contributed equally, the average burden would have been $91. Not all of this was raised by taxation. State and local governments plunged deeper into debt through bond issues totaling $1,063,-000,00Some day these principal sums must be paid. Meanwhile, 4 interest and amortization charges pile up. Our money spending fever is not rising; neither is it falling. .We have sobered up a bit since the war, but we are spending per person for governments more than three and a half times as much as in 1902. Government costs us per head five and a half times as much as in 1890. Why? What is wrong? Why do' taxes rise and rise and hardly ever fall? Why does it cost more per head to govern Americans decade after decade? ' The war? Certainly the war is a factor. We are carrying a , $20,000,000,000 war debt, but the war is not the sole culprit. Our real trouble is that we regard the government. as a national, state or local Christmas tree. We want to pick something easy, comfortable and costly off its branches all the time. We want government to keep us clean, smooth the roads for our feet, insure our profits and, no matter how we sin against thrift and economic common sense, to keep us from going to the poorhouse. It must not only educate us; it must amuse us. If wheat prices are low, d veteran gets a the farmer wants them fixed higher. The bonus. Industrys palm itches for subsidies. d to do We have increased federal and state bureaus things for us, most of which we should do for ourselves. These are tax supported. We have manned them with swarms of employes bureau chiefs, assistants, inspectors, deputies, subdeputies and clerks, all tax fed. For every twelve workers there is one tax eater, one government employe or official. Many of the things they do are good; some of them are vitally necessary. But, if we continue to keep all these and create others, to help ourselves to governmental luxuries as well as necessities, how long can we pay the bills? For state and county taxes now take all the rent value of some ; poorer farm land. Land taxes have' risen faster than land values. One of these days the state may find itself a landlord with its citizens as Nation-alizer- s tenants, for taxes here and there are becoming confiscatory. are praying for that result. They are our dearest lovers of bureaucracy. Socialism welcomes it, for Marxism holds that all business, industry and workers should be the tools and peons of- the state, working for the state. . 0. able-bodie- ten-fol- - That is the underlying philosophy of nationalization of utilities and government ownership programs. ; Taxes can never decrease so long as we penalize thrift, discourage initiative and rob ourselves of capital needed for development in order that we may have the luxuries of bureaus, agencies, subsidies and bonuses. If the annual cost of governments is to be reduced from it must be done by cutting down public expenditures. We must wait for new bureaus, new social agencies and the ornaments, purple sashes and bridle fringes of governing until we can afford them. If taxes are not to be confiscatory, we must cut our garments of government according to the cloth of our national income. It will be well for our Utah legislature to not only consider some of these facts but to go to the bottom and sift out all the useless bur $10,-000,000,0- 00 reauswehave. Let us have a government by the people and for the people. - CONFISCATION In some of our states we find advocates of compulsory automobile insurance. If you own an automobile you must insure it. The reason for such CLASS legislation is that the automobile has proved the easiest money getter in the market. Its taxes are so numerous that the ordinary individual cannot keep track of them, and if all property was taxed as is the automobile, it would mean nothing more nor less than confiscation of property because no one would be able to pay. We claim automobile insurance is a good thing. All insurance is good, of whatsoever nature, but to compel an individual to insure a certain class of property just shows how we are drifting in this country. Everyone with a pet scheme trys to put it over at the legislature to work the people for their last dime. Socialism appears now to have worked its way into business. The insurance business must be on the bum in some stales or why even talk about compulsory automobile insurance. Now that radio has come, corporations no doubt will conceive that they by right of dominion own the atmosphere and they will soon ask legislation to give them absolute control of the air we breath. However, by paying a license, we may be allowed to go on breathing. Priority rights do not count; its the first man to file a claim. The sad part of all this freak legislation is that in some quarters i"f it does get attention, and by some apparently. sane people. What a nice graft it would be for any "Insurance company to have a law passed in this state, for instance, compelling every one to insure their automobile. Insurance companies could even do away with their solicitors; the law would create the business for them; the people would pay for the administering of the law and the insurance companies would collect the profits at their leisure. Of late years we have had so much freak legislation that it is no wonder that there are many schemers laying awake at nights thinking for it. The. up some easy way to make big money without working i |