Unlike proportionality, progression provides no principle which tells us what the relative burden of different persons ought to be the argument based on the presumed justice of progression provides no limitation, as has often been admitted by its supporters, before all incomes above a certain figure are confiscated, and those below left untaxed.
Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.
Progressive tax funds public services.
To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be... controlled in everything.
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
'I think we should take money from everyone,' I told her, 'regardless of their ability to pay. After all, this is America.'
The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.