The Modern King George

Increasingly the dictum of Santayana echoes in my mind: those who will not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. He may not have said it exactly that way, and he may not have meant it the way we interpret it today, but it makes sense to me.

The lesson today is the history of the founding of our recently less than great nation. You might recall that the figurative straw that broke the back of our local camel was King George III and his need to finance the defense of his colonies. The logic he applied was irrefutable: it cost money to supply all those redcoats, the American colonies were what was being protected, the best folks to pay for that were the colonials. So, he taxed. He taxed commerce and correspondence. He taxed every transaction. He taxed their whisky (which would have bugged me,) and he taxed their tea, which vexed them severely. They revolted, they won and George was out a very profitable enterprise.

Now, we've got a bunch of folks who haven't read their history or learned their lesson:

Tax & Spend Illustrated

The good folks at New York, are among the most heavily taxed in the nation. The NY City people are among the very few who pay not only federal and state income tax, but also a city income tax. They pay sales taxes and property taxes and excise taxes. Now, the state is going to tax virtually everything else.

Will the fine citizens of New York be as vexed as the Boston Patriots who dumped the tea? Somehow I doubt that. It is probably too late for them.

The lesson needs to be learned on the broader scale of the entire nation. Is New York the vanguard of fiscal irresponsiblity? Will they lead the way for the entire nation to tax our entire lives to fulfill the promise of no business failures, no mortgage forclosures, no healthcare bills, no tuition expenses, and no discomforts that can only be offered through government mandates?

Certainly there is every indication that the lesson of George III was not internalized and might need a quick review. Dust off the history books and maybe the economics texts as well.