Have, then, the courage of your opinions,-- respect
for wealth, and no pity for the poor, whom the God of monopoly
has condemned. The less the hireling has wherewith to live, the
more he must pay: qui minus habet, etiam quod habet auferetur ab
eo. This is necessary, this is inevitable; in it lies the safety
of society.
Let us try, nevertheless, to reverse the progression of the tax,
and so arrange it that the capitalist, instead of the laborer,
will pay the larger share.
I observe, in the first place, that with the usual method of
collection, such a reversal is impracticable.
In fact, if the tax falls on exploitable capital, this tax, in
its entirety, is included among the costs of production, and then
of two things one: either the product, in spite of the increase
in its selling value, will be bought by the consumer, and
consequently the producer will be relieved of the tax; or else
this same product will be thought too dear, and in that case the
tax, as J. B. Say has very well said, acts like a tithe levied on
seed,--it prevents production.
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