As we continue to bail out private industries and prepare to file our taxes (or extensions) next week, I am reminded by the following two quotes that this is probably not how the founders (or at least Jefferson) intended it to be.

The first relates to the lessons we can learn from our founder as we are continually pressured to dip into the people’s pockets to bail out private for profit industries.

"I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor Monticello, May 28, 1816
Source: University of Virginia Library Charlottesville, Va.

His first inaugural address can also be a lesson for today about making private industry pay its own way and to lower taxes on the income of our employees.

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
Source: University of Virginia Library Charlottesville, Va.

Are the income taxes we pay today not completely in defiance of this?

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