Taxes: An Overview

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Though not the first to observe this truth, Benjamin Franklin penned this maxim in 1789.  Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind, wrote, "Death, taxes, and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them."

Taxes have been around as long as Government - and in a more cruder form - as long as one human exerted dominance over another.  Other than laws prohibiting individual liberty; taxes are the most intrusive form of Government upon the individual.  

Core Truth Four: Trade Offs are unavoidable

New solutions always come with new problems.

By 1890 New York was running out of space.  There were at least a 150,000 horses living in New York.  Horses transported goods, services, and people throughout the streets, and while so occupied, each put out twenty-two pounds of horse manure each day.  This amounts to 90,000 pounds each month.

The problems caused by such a copious and never-ending amount of horse shit are easy to imagine.  George Waring, Jr., the City's Street Cleaning Commissioner, described the city as stinking "with emanations of putrefying organic matter."  City streets, according to Elizabeth Kolbert, were"literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven."  Brownstone apartment first floors were up one level to give relief from the smells.  Where lesser amounts of manure had been happily purchased by surrounding farmers - the over abundant supply had produced such a glut, that New York could not give the manure away.