09/28/2024
The biggest attack on property rights was the adoption of the federal income tax in 1913. As Frank Chodorov explained in The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, the government was now saying the following:
Your earnings are not exclusively your own. We have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours. We will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, but not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide. . . . The amount of your earnings that you may retain for yourself is determined by the needs of the government, and you have nothing to say about it.
