By Norman G. Axe Santa Monica
Don’t the transit advocates pushing for an increase in the sales tax to pay for the Subway to the Sea realize that such a tax is regressive in that the percentage of income spent on goods liable to taxation is higher among low-income groups.
In 1909 Rep. Ollie Murray James (D-Ky) stated that “No tax was ever more unjust than a tax upon consumption.
A tax upon what some people eat and what they wear would deny them the necessaries of life, while others, rolling in opulence and accumulating their wealth into the millions, would not feel such a tax.”
That same year Rep. Martin Dies (D-Texas) opined: “What form of taxation could be more unjust than to tax a man in proportion to what he eats, wears, and uses? …. It is a damnable system which taxes want and exempts wealth, which takes toll from the clothes on the poor man’s back and leaves untouched the rich man’s bank.”
Four years later in 1913 in discussing the income tax law passed as a result of the adoption of the 16th Amendment, Rep.
Cordell Hull (D-Tenn.) [later Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt] stated that: “A glance at the fiscal history of all countries shows a constant struggle on the part of the wealthy and more powerful classes to shift the chief weight of government taxation to the shoulders and backs of those weaker, poor-er, and less able to protect themselves from the injustice and oppression inflicted by disproportionate tax burdens.
This conflict has been and is today being waged in the United States.”
How to pay for this subway? Simple, just increase the income tax which has been defined as a fairer or more just tax.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 25, 2008. Read the original PDF.