Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing
By David Cay Johnston
The
founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every
other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would
survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and
businesses.
George Washington, nine months before his
inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the
most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry
and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he
continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the
lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."
The
second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy
the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would
manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The
capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless
constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic
and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty,
with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."
James
Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an
evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially
unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of
laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme
wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents
towards a state of comfort."
Alexander
Hamilton, who championed manufacturing and banking as the first
Treasury secretary, also argued for widespread ownership of assets,
warning in 1782 that, "whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any
set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it."
Late
in life, Adams, pessimistic about whether the republic would endure,
wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the
wealthy and powerful but to achieve "the greatest happiness for the
greatest number."
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing-245454.html
The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. Noah Webster, Founding Father
ReplyDeleteIf there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not — it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth
ReplyDeleteWith Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property
Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."
The states left no doubt that in taking this step they were giving expression to a basic and widely shared philosophical belief that equality of citizenship was impossible in a nation where inequality of wealth remained the rule. North Carolina's 1784 statute explained that by keeping large estates together for succeeding generations, the old system had served "only to raise the wealth and importance of particular families and individuals, giving them an unequal and undue influence in a republic" and promoting "contention and injustice." Abolishing aristocratic forms of inheritance would by contrast "tend to promote that equality of property which is of the spirit and principle of a genuine republic."
Others wanted to go much further; Thomas Paine, like Smith and Jefferson, made much of the idea that landed property itself was an affront to the natural right of each generation to the usufruct of the earth, and proposed a "ground rent" — in fact an inheritance tax — on property at the time it is conveyed at death, with the money so collected to be distributed to all citizens at age 21, "as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."
Even stalwart members of the latter-day Republican Party, the representatives of business and inherited wealth, often emphatically embraced these tenets of economic equality in a democracy. I've mentioned Herbert Hoover's disdain for the "idle rich" and his strong support for breaking up large fortunes. Theodore Roosevelt, who was the first president to propose a steeply graduated tax on inheritances, was another: he declared that the transmission of large wealth to young men "does not do them any real service and is of great and genuine detriment to the community at large.''
In her debate in Delaware yesterday, the Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell asserted that the estate tax is a "tenet of Marxism." I'm not sure how much Marx she has read, but she might want to read the works of his fellow travelers Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Herbert Hoover, and Theodore Roosevelt before her next debate.
http://budiansky.blogspot.com/2010/10/adam-smith-thomas-jefferson-and-other.html
Tea Party phonies: Doing the conservative zigzag and right-wing flip-flop, based on who’s president
ReplyDeleteThe Democratic Party is not as liberal as it was. The GOP is further right. Why do Republicans live in fantasyland?
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/05/tea_party_phonies_doing_the_conservative_zigzag_and_right_wing_flip_flop_based_on_whos_president/
The author of the Declaration of Independence had some firm beliefs about how a free government should treat the very rich and the not rich at all.
ReplyDelete"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785
"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. ... Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." --Thomas Jefferson
He expressed these sentiments many times.
Thomas Paine argued that citizens must be paid a form of reparations for having their natural right to land being subverted by private property, quite literally:
ReplyDelete"Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property." -Agrarian Justice
He also advocated for old age pensions.
It's 1794, and the Whiskey Rebellion is underway. George Washington says, "Oh my. Those wonderful patriots are rebelling against me. I must be a tyrant. They should overthrow me."
ReplyDeleteNot.
George sent 13,000 troops to Western Pennsylvania with the express purpose of killing those little boogers.
Granted his purpose wasn't to kill them, it was to put down the insurrection. He accomplished this with no deaths.
DeleteThe Founding Fathers clearly faced hanging and it was no idle threat and our new founding libertarians would pee all over themselves if faced with such a ordeal.Not to mention the actual revolutionary war where they had to go and starve and fight while at the same time CEOs of the time and I might add of the same ilk as our new libertarian CEOs refused to contribute to the cause.I say the new ones are a pale comparison and as such would fail if they even tried
ReplyDeleteThey were the progressives of their time basing the D of I and the Constitution which were radical documents on the enlightenment . They put in place amendments and the possibility of others. They would not be so much in tune with "original intent" because they knew that they could not imagine the future. Unlike a Scalia who uses "original intent" only when it suits him they saw the Constitution as a malleable document that would keep up with changes in society, science, etc
ReplyDeleteLibertarians skew heavily white, male, and young. Hilariously, the number of self-identified libertarian African Americans didn't even register a full 1% on their graph.
ReplyDeletehttp://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013.AVS_WEB.pdf
The libertarian movement is overwhelming white privileged males who never experienced living in a society where they were persecuted with bigotry. Women and minorities make up a very small fraction of libertarians. This is hardly surprising given the stances that libertarians make.
DeleteLibertarian think that the Civil Rights Acts was an act of violence. It is stomped on businesses owners freedom to discriminate.
They also believe that a males boss should have the right to sexually harass female employees since they are voluntarily working there. If you don't want to sleep with your boss, then go find another job.
The Declaration of Independence was written SOLELY as a propaganda piece to justify rebellion against the crown. All that the signers hoped for with it was that enough people would agree with that rebellion to establish and fund a successful army/navy to overthrow the king.
ReplyDeleteIt was never intended as a document rejecting ALL government -- just the existing government.
The Founding Fathers (except, perhaps, Thomas Paine, who thought every generation should foment its own rebellion) never anticipated that the document would be used against the government they intended to establish. It was assumed that the democratic process would result in a government that would be responsive to people's needs.
DeleteWhat we have, instead, is a government that is essentially run by corporations.
Libertarians are right wingers without any personal convictions beyond self interest.
ReplyDelete