estroy 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 commodities 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.

It requires no lengthy economic or moral argument as a platform for
denunciation of all waste and useless expenditure. Some sane medium is
needed between comfort and luxury. Failing definition, and objection to
blue laws, the theme must be taken into the area of moral virtues and
become a proper subject for the spiritual stimulations of the church.
There is a psychology in luxury wherein we all buy high-priced things
because they are high-priced, not because they add comfort--and this has
contributed also to our high cost of living, for those who do it drive
up prices on those who try to avoid it. From an economic point of view,
the only recipes are taxation as a device to make it expensive.

More constructive than increasing taxes is to take a holiday on
governmental expenditures and relieve the taxpayer generally. If we
could stave off a lot of expensiv