Explore "Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation" by Otto H. Kahn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Whilst the House Bill imposes luxury and semi-luxury taxes, it fails -- as I have mentioned before -- to resort to consumption taxes of a general kind -- a deliberate but, in my opinion, unwarrantable omission.
My advocacy of consumption and similar taxes, such as stamp taxes of many kinds, is not actuated by any desire to relieve those with large incomes from the maximum of contribution which may wisely and fairly be imposed on them. I advocate consumption and general stamp taxes -- such as every other belligerent country without exception has found it well to impose -- because of the well attested fact that while productive of very large revenues in the aggregate, they are easily borne, causing no strain or dislocation, and automatically collected; and because of the further fact that they tend to induce economy than which nothing is more important at this time and which, as far as I can observe, is not being practised by the rank and file of our people to a degree comparable to what it is in England and France.