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Show "SOAKING THE POOR" In recent years the government has depended more and more on indirect taxes for revenue, and less and less on direct di-rect taxes. Indirect taxes are simply levies hidden in the cost of commodities com-modities and services taxes paid in advance by producer or marketer. We seldom even know we are paying them, but their whole influence is to boost the cost of living. This trend of government is extremely menacing. In effect, ef-fect, indirect taxes reduce the incomes of us all and the greatest burden falls on the person of small means. A laborer earning twenty dollars a week eats as much bread as a man whose income may be a hundred or a thousand a week, but his tax contribution to the government, represented by part of the cost of the bread he eats, is the same in relation to his earnings, much greater. The upshot of this is that the bulk of the people, those of small or moderate means, are most adversely affected, by rising taxes. |