US Articles of Confederation

My Photo
Name:
Location: Annapolis, MD, United States

Let entrepreneurs into Cuba, keep the tax low and watch the economic explosion happen. Whenever there are more jobs than workers the wages and benefits are driven upward. That's because entrepreneurs compete for a limited supply of workers. Those who lose the competition will not be as successful because they can't grow without more laborers. Finally, the first modern society on the planet will be populated by people who are neither slaves to the pharaohs of industry nor government. Cuban workers will have the best job security in the world!

Saturday, September 02, 2006

The US Articles of Confederation

The Land Tax

The federal government was originally funded by a
land tax, under the Articles of Confederation (see quote
below).

It was only changed when big land barons in the south and others pressured to shift over to taxes on labor and production, when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. Here's the quote:

The United States' Articles of Confederation:

ARTICLE VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within each state,
granted to or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.


The federal government could still largely be funded by a land tax, and that would still be allowed under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. If we stopped corporate welfare and other favoritism to special interests, and introduced incentives to public services to improve quality and cost-efficiency (as in the book Reinventing Government, by Osborne & Gaebler), a land tax/green tax shift would be enough to fund the federal government.


Mike O'Mara