OCR Text |
Show Who Will Pay? Who will pay the taxes after all property ha-, been confiscated and all capital has at last found its way into the coffers of the government? The optimistic answer is that that will never happen. Probably it won't. But we are coming closer to it than we realize. In some middle western sfates more than 50 per cent of the farms have been foreclosed and are being worked by lessees, not owners. In some cities it is cheaper to tear a good building down than to allow it to stand because taxes on the structure are greater than the income it produces. In other cases it is cheaper to close a factory--because, under present condition-returns condition-returns are not great enough to meet the tax bill and the other running expenses. It is very easy to advocate soaking the rich to help the poor But over-taxation of capital is the surest way to produce distress, unemployment, un-employment, depression. When people are afraid to invest their money in producing enterprises because be-cause of fear of increasing taxation, taxa-tion, the country faces a crisis from unemployment and actual confiscation of capital and jobs bv taxation. ' The Congress now in session must deal with an unbalanced budget. The next Congress will have the same identical problem Unless expenditures are reduced there will come a time when there will not be enough taxpayers taxpay-ers to meet government's high cost. |