Herbert Hoover: The Man and His Work

by Vernon L. Kellogg

Aside from the necessary rise in the margin that has grown out of the rise in cost of labor, rent, etc., from inflation and world shortage, there are some causes which have accumulated to increase the margins between the farmer and the wholesaler and the wholesaler and consumer that could be greatly mitigated.

Better Tax Distribution

During the war, in order to restrain wild greed and profiteering in the then existing unlimited demand, margins between purchase and sale in the different manufacturing and handling trades were fixed in all the great commodities—iron, steel, cement, lumber, coal and foodstuffs. The first task of the war was to secure production, and the margins were therefore fixed at such breadth as would allow the smaller high cost manufacturer and the smaller dealer to live. Otherwise, the smaller competitors would have been extinguished, production would have been lost, and, worse yet, the larger low-cost opera

tor would have been left with much inflated monopoly. The excess profits tax was levied as a sequent corrective to this necessary first step, so as to take the undue profits of the large producer back to the public. It was a wise war measure, but the moment restraints on profits were taken off and there was a free and rising market ahead, then the tax was added to prices by all the participants and passed on to the consumer, or deducted from the farmer when world levels crowded his prices down. It should have been repealed at the time the controls were abandoned, but our legislatures have been busy with other things and, in the meanwhile, in food it not only increases the margin between the farmer and the consumer but tends, as stated above, to come out of the farmer to a large degree. It has other vicious results in that it also stimulates dealers and manufacturers to speculate their profits away in unsound business, rather than to pay it to the government. It does sound well to tax the great manufacturers, but to make them the agency to collect taxes from the population is not altogether sound government.

It is a very important tax to the Government, bringing as it does over a billion a year, and a place to put this load is not to be found

easily. The income tax does not have so malign an effect, for it comes to a great extent from the individual and not from business. The present method of income tax, however, has some weaknesses. The same levy is made upon earned incomes as upon those that are unearned. The tax on earned incomes tends in certain cases to be passed on to the consumer or deducted from the farmer, and, besides, it is not just that a family living by giving productive service to the community should pay the same as a family that contributes nothing by way of effort. A stiff tax on these latter families might send them to work, and certainly would induce economy. Moreover, the earner of income must provide for old age and dependents while the unearned income taxpayer has this provision already. Altogether, it would seem the part of wisdom at least to increase the income tax on the larger unearned income and decrease it on the earners. It is argued that this drives great incomes to evasion by investment in tax-free securities, which is probably true. We need more comparative figures than the Treasury statistics yet show to answer this point. In any event, relief to the earner would free his savings to invest in taxable securities and we need above all things to stimulate the initiative of the saver. Income

taxes, except when too high on earned incomes, do not destroy initiative, and every other government has, in taxing, recognized the essential difference between earned and unearned income. This distinction would generally relieve the range of smaller incomes, for they are mostly earned.

The inheritance tax has not been fully exploited as yet. It cannot be deducted from either farmer or consumer, it does not affect the cost of living, it does not destroy initiative in the individual if it leaves large and proper residues for dependents. It does redistribute overswollen fortunes. It does make for equality of opportunity by freeing the dead hand from control of our tools of production. It reduces extravagance in the next generation, and sends them to constructive service. It has a theoretic economic objection of being a dispersal of capital into income in the hands of the government, but so long as the government spends an equal amount on redemption of the debt or productive works, even this argument no longer stands.

We may need to come to some sort of increased consumption taxes in order to lift that part of excess profits and tax on earned incomes that cannot be very properly placed elsewhere. When it comes, it should lie on other commodi

ties than food, except perhaps sugar, one half of which is a luxury consumption. The ideal would be for it to be levied wholly on non-essentials in order that it should be a burden on luxury and not on necessity. There is no doubt difficulty in classifying. Jewelry and furs are easy to class, but where necessity leaves off and luxury begins in trousers is more difficult to determine.