We are in need of a qualified lawyer prepared to file a lawsuit against Progressive Taxation as a denial of Due Process and Equal Protection of the law. For centuries, people have debated whether the wealthy should pay more taxes than everyone else and what even constitutes the wealthy. The definition of the rich has constantly changed. It has now fallen to not just an individual, but to household income. that can easily be expanded to your children if they still live at home because they cannot afford rent or to buy a house thanks to non-dischargeable school loans for worthless degrees. We have unsettled questions as to who is the rich a person or a family, and then just how much more they should pay on a percentage basis compared to everyone else.

These issues have never been resolved despite the fact that the government has been shifting the definitions and presidential elections constantly push class warfare. This notion of “progressive” taxation has escalated into demand to end all freedoms and even confiscate the wealth of the so-called rich which comes down to the top income tax bracket which was $250,000 was expanded to 37% for $518,401 or more. This issue even sparked one of the early battles over tax distribution. Supporters of progressive taxation favored a graduated tax structure, where the tax rate
would increase with the taxpayer’s income. Opponents of progressive taxation believed that a person should not pay a higher tax rate just because he or she earned a higher income for this denies equal protection of the law and creates class warfare which began with Karl Marx.

Thanks to Marx, the debate over progressive taxation began to intensify at the turn of the 20th century with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, which permitted a federal income tax whereby the founders prohibited any direct form of taxation. During the colonial days, a tax they created was a “faculty tax” which did not tax income, but your ability to earn income. Then in 1913, Congress passed its first “lawful” income tax which was progressive because this was the attitude that even dominated the Supreme Court at that time.

Before the creation of the United States, taxes were paid to the United Kingdom by the Colonies who also imposed local taxes. The Articles of Confederation did not give the federal government any power to tax leaving that to the States. In England, the king needed the consent of the people to be taxed which is why he would call Parliament who represented the people. To this day, it is Congress that pretends to have the “consent” of the people to be taxed. Then in 1787, the US Constitution became law and it did give the federal government that power to tax indirectly which was primarily tariffs, and a portion of those taxes had to be given back to the states based on population. The Supreme Court ruled in 1797 what was meant by Direct Taxation (see Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 171 (1797))

Interestingly, it took one 51.6-year wave of the Economic Confidence Model where the fiscal mismanagement of the states began to put pressure on further taxation. From 1837, some states began to add income and property taxes. The Civil War led to the Revenue Act of 1861 which allowed a federal income tax which was to expire with the Civil War. This was direct taxation which was then found unconstitutional later in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895). It was finally in 1911 when Wisconsin became the first state to adopt an individual and corporate tax. This was upheld with respect to corporations in Flint v. Stone Tracy Company, 220 U.S. 107 (1911).

It wasn’t until the 16th Amendment in 1913, that the federal government was granted the power to levy income tax on both property and labor and included corporate and individual income tax. This went to the Supreme Court which held that the income tax was then constitution under the 16th Amendment (see: BRUSHABER v. UNION PACIFIC R. CO., 240 U.S. 1 (1916)). The income tax debate did not begin until it was no longer the rich being taxed, but it was applied under socialism and Roosevelt with the birth of the payroll tax to affect the pocketbooks of an entire nation with World, people began to pay more attention.

There is no question that many scholars expressed deep concerns about progressive taxations. They criticized progressive taxation on the basis that it was “unfair” to pay greater than one’s proportionate share. Any such proposition that one’s ability to pay is discrimination indistinguishable from race, gender, or religion. The courts just held that it is unconstitutional to draft into the military only boys and not girls. Under these same principles, it is unconstitutional to tax one person at a higher percentage because of his ability to pay. This is the very essence of Marxism which not only violates the Ten Commandments, but it clear divides society creating class warfare.

In 1952, the publishing of “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation,” by Professors Blum and Kalven, did we come to a systematic and very scholarly analysis of progressive taxation. They criticized progressive taxation primarily on economic grounds but conceded its constitutionality. Later in 1985, another book was published: “Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent
Domain” authored by Professor Richard Epstein. Here Epstein argued that progressive taxation was not constitutional suggesting that the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause prohibited such progressive taxation.

No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Supreme Court has never definitively upheld progressive taxation. You cannot have liberty and your right to property which turns on your class any more than on your race, gender, religion, or your sexual preference. The Supreme Court should, in fact, find progressive taxation totally unconstitutional. We may need to challenge this now in order to block the Socialist Agenda about to destroy the very freedoms of the United States.

What we need is a real law firm ready and willing to bring a class action lawsuit to start the only effort we have to prevent Socialism destroying our nation like Venezuela or the old Communist Regimes. You do not create prosperity by stealing from one person and handing it to another. If it is illegal to do so if an individual robs another, then the same principle applies if politicians exonerate themselves for committing the very same act. Equal Protection means we must all be equal under the eyes of the law.

COMMENT: No matter what you deny, you are advising Trump. He quotes you often and now he is taking your position that taxes are irrelevant and should be abolished. He has also said that he would create a permanent tax holiday for those earning less than $100,000 if he is reelected. Stop denying this.

GG

REPLY: Granted, he has used the language in my letters. This idea of abolishing taxes has been my position. We run deficits anyway and taxes will never balance the budget. They were needed when money was a physical coin. But it is just electronic today. We spend so much on tax collection and then the entire class warfare is always over confiscating assets of one group to had to another. Abolishing taxes was laid out in the Solution CD.

I am NOT advising Trump. I do not speak to him on the phone nor have I seen him since I attended a private event at his Florida compound. There are plenty of people who read this blog and the private blog in Washington. What information others pass on is out of my direct control. I am not interested in working at the White House. Who really cares where he takes his advice? Your tone seems hostile and I suspect you are trying to create a link between us only for political purposes. Sorry! You are barking up the wrong tree!

As we head into the fall of 2020, the damage from this coronavirus lockdown will begin to make its full impact felt. While about 25 million unemployed receive $600 a week, there remain arguments to reduce that to $200. Meanwhile, the real impact will be witnessed as the eviction moratorium, which lasted for nearly four months, ends as it will raise the risk of many being put out on the street. Over 12 million renters are already behind on rent payments thanks to these lockdowns. The small businesses that are in trouble cast a very dark cloud over commercial real estate. Virtually every small shopping strip even in Florida has signs out for rent.

The total official unemployment figure for the US stands at more than 31 million who have collected unemployment benefits of some form. However, our model shows the real number is closer to 40 million given all the part-time people who were not entitled to unemployment. At the start of the year, the total civil workforce was about 164,606,000. The official unemployment rate is about 19%, but counting the full scope we have reached the same levels of the Great Depression. Small business always suffers the most during such declines disproportionately. This will impact future economic growth.

The latest claim running around is that the dollar is overvalued relevant to its trading partners, and it will decline as the economy recovers due to imports. You really have to wonder if these analysts are just working from home and have lost all sense of the world because they are locked down. In that forecast, they are ASSUMING that the world economy will recover as if nothing has taken place.

This is the typical analysis that simply focuses on domestic numbers and assumes that if you import more goods, then the dollar must decline. This theory is up there with thinking raising interest rates will be bearish for the economy and the stock market. Interestingly, both the economy and the stock market rallied as long as interest rates were RISING!

This is not a world that you can judge simply by looking at trade statistics. It is pure sophistry. In 2018, exports of goods and services from the United States made up about 12.22% of its gross domestic product (GDP), while US imports amounted to 15.33%. We have allocated trade according to the flag the company flies, and then you will see that the US has a trade surplus. Moreover, I assisted the Japanese on how to reduce their trade surplus buying gold in New York, taking delivery, and exporting it to London and selling it there. It does not matter what is exported; the statistics only look at dollars — not goods. This theory about trade to claim the dollar will decline is laughable.

All you have to do is real correlation analysis. Here is the US dollar Index, which was wrongly constructed based upon trade rather than capital flows, and the low in the trade deficit took place in 2006. It began to IMPROVE as the world economy turned down, and in 2008, we see an outside reversal with the dollar rising. The dollar peaked in 2001 on this index and that was the crash in the market from the 2000 peak in the Dot.com Bubble.

The true trends that reveal the future are based upon capital flows. The dollar rallied and peaked in 1985 during that recession, but on the US stock market, the Dow performed a rare outside reversal to the upside in 1982, which began the explosion from 1,000 to 6,000. That also attracted capital flows for investment. The dollar peaked in 2001 during that recession as capital contracted.