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Show THE SAME OLD SCHEME It is a curious fact that the jeople of the present day show a marked tendency to restrict by law their own business andi personal activities and at the same time increase the powers of those elected or appointed to Impose Im-pose taxes or otherwise deal with the individual and community welfare. This tendency, which should be most carefully considered for its direct effect ef-fect on representative government, received and enormous impetus on account of the war. although it had previously become well denned and manifested in various parts of the country. The program advocated by the tax revisionists of Utah proposes legislation legisla-tion of the kind indicated. It is very strongly in favor of extensive and """ further delegation of powers now reserved re-served to the people. In fact. Its chief proponents are known to favor the removal of all constitutional lim-i'ations lim-i'ations and restrictions on taxation and taxing authorities and the centralization cen-tralization of all the assessing and quallslng powers of the state in a small appointive board or an appointive appoin-tive individual, with the local assessors asses-sors subject to appointment and removal re-moval by the central board or individual. indi-vidual. This program cannot be made fully operative in I'tah without with-out amendment of the constitution, but it is thoroughly well known that a group consisting of some college professors and a few others have long been committed to it and anxious anxi-ous to put it in effect here. A former tax commission of this state advocated the plan in its report, re-port, with the rather interesting com ment that government by individuals appointed by elective officers is not less representative than government directly by elective officers. The report re-port was not atlopted and citizens who, both as individuals and as business bus-iness men, have been supervised, Insisted, In-sisted, reviewed, investigated, licensed, li-censed, certified and otherwise harried har-ried to exasperation by appointed or-ficerH, or-ficerH, bureaus and commissions, national na-tional and local, in recent years, with the knowledge that relief can come-only come-only through uprooting elaborate -vstems instead of voting a few oul of office, are not only likely to rise with enthusiasm in support of a movement for further delegation of powers and more appointed officers. We continue in the view that the first move for relief of taxpayers lies in concerted action to reduce public expenditures rather than to enact new laws and set up more official machinery to enforce them. |