Re: Further costs of war

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 00:02:01 +0100 (MET)
> From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
> Subject: Further Costs of War

Hi Monty,

I have a couple of questions...

> A few more comments on World War II.
> 
> Had World War II been prevented, along with deaths of 50 million or so
> people, we would also have been spared (in the United States) income
> tax withholding.  Previously the only people paying income tax were
> fairly wealthy and there was no withholding.

Any particular methodology you might care to share on stopping WWII?
Being an avid amateur historian concerning WWII I am very much interested in
any insight you might have.

As to taxation and withholding:

 
			       ARTICLE XVI. 
 
	The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on 
incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the 
several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. 
[25 February 1913.] 
 
Notice the date of implimentation, considerably before WWII, it is in fact
the year before the US became involved in WWI. Perhaps you meant WWI instead
of WWII? Citizens of the US have been paying taxes since 1914.

> I doubt very much that income tax withholding would have been accepted
> if the War were not used to justify it.  ("You don't want to pay
> taxes?  What are you, a traitor?")

What war? The taxes came about because of issues other than fighting a war
which hadn't even happened yet.


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At 3:43 pm -0500 on 11/23/97, Jim Choate wrote:


> 			       ARTICLE XVI.
>
> 	The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on
> incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the
> several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
> [25 February 1913.]

Wasn't the 16th ammendment the result of the constitutional challenge of a
Spanish American War tax? Or maybe it was used to fund whatever progressive
stuff TR was up to at the time. It seems to me that, from the Spanish
American War until the ammendment's implementation would be a reasonable
timeframe to get an ammendment effort underway, passed by congress, and
ratified by the states. Given the popularity of the war, it wouldn't
surprise me if a tax implemented to pay for it would have gone down so
easily.

I know that the income tax was first attempted as a temporary measure in
the Civil War, without much compliance, I bet, given that was a book entry
tax being tried in a predominantly cash-settled bearer certificate economy,
and, that, when they tried to do it again, sometime in the Third Great
Awakening :-),  the Supreme Court struck it down.

Of course, all the pseudoconstitutionalist claptrap about the 16th being
unconstitutional is, of course, that. The constitution's what the Supreme
Court says it is, unfortunately.

Doesn't mean the damn thing shouldn't be repealed, though there's fat
chance of that. Oh well. Fortunately, we can fight back with digital bearer
settlement. Someday. Soon, I hope.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
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At 1:43 PM -0700 11/23/97, Jim Choate wrote:
...
>Any particular methodology you might care to share on stopping WWII?
>Being an avid amateur historian concerning WWII I am very much interested in
>any insight you might have.

Not entering the war. There's ample evidence that the U.S. provoked the
Japanese in various ways. (I'm not saying the Japanese were blameless, or
lily-white, or"nice," etc., only that most historians agree--and Japanese
archives support--that the Japanese were motivated to attack Pearl Harbor
in the hope that a devastating first blow would sink enough ships, etc., to
cause America to back off in its actions in the ironically named Pacific.)

Had the U.S. concentrated on its own affairs, on just trade, it is unlikely
that what the Japanese were doing in Malaysia, Manchuria, Korea, Indochina,
and the Phillipines would have had any major interest for us.

As for Europe, this was even less our war than the Pacific war.

In a sense, so _what_ if some army from some nation was rolling over other
armies?

(The "evilness" of Hitler is not the issue, either. Else Stalin and Mao
would have been cause enough to go to war.)

(And the issue of "alliances" is even murkier. The states of the U.S. have
little to fear from Canada or Mexico, so what use have "alliances" ever
been? Much could be said about the pros and cons of alliances, but I am
persuaded that the U.S. should avoid them. And certainly the monarchic
alliances which led to the First World War--a war fought over the Hapsburg
Dynasty and assorted intrigues==were completely absurd. Even the proximate
cause of the U.S. entry into the war, the sinking of the "Lusitania" and
related events, was duplicitous on the part of the U.S. government...the
U.S. gov't. was "taking sides" by shipping munitions on the L.)

As for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem...not my war.  A tragedy
and a horrible atrocity, to be sure, but so were the forced starvation of
the Kulaks and others, the decision by the PRC government to deliberately
sacrifice a region of 30 million peasants, the "killing fields" of
Cambodia, the Rwanda massacres, and so on.

Just as invading Cambodia to save a million Cambodians was not justified,
just as invading Rwanda to stop the killing of a million Hutus or Tutsis or
both, so, too, was an invasion of Europe to save some Frenchmen or some
Jews or Gypsies unjustified.

If the U.S. had not become "policeman to the world" in the early part of
this century ("...but carry a big stick"), or, more to the point, if the
United States were (emphasis on the plural "were," not "was") highly
authonomous and decentralized, it is hard to imagine Illinois or New
Hampshire deciding to send their men to die in the Pacific for some
abstract notion of "stopping Japanese imperialism." Ditto for the war in
Europe, although no doubt many with relatives in Euope would be pressing
for mandatory action. Understandable, but ignorable in a free society.

Those who wanted to liberate the death camps, or to push Hitler back into
Gerrmany, or to kick the Emperor's butt could, of course, simply go over
and volunteer. In a free society, mercenaries are legal.

The last justifiable war the American states were involved in was,
arguably, the War of 1812. Every war since then has been unjustified.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

> 
> The last justifiable war the American states were involved in was,
> arguably, the War of 1812. Every war since then has been unjustified.
> 
> --Tim May
> 

Chuckle. The "war" of 1812 was nearly as much of an internal political 
struggle over the form the U.S. gov't was to take as was the "civil war."

"State's rights" were a key issue, with most of New England strongly 
opposed to the "war", which was causing New Englanders severe economic 
loss to to blockades which prevented their trade with England (the enemy).

Many did not wish to add additional states beyond the origianl seaboard 
13, which would have doomed the new nation to being a British dependant.

There was great debate over the form a representative government was to 
take, with some supporting the idea that the "common" man was too 
ignorant to perceive long-term issues; some wanted a "house of lords" and 
"house of commons" as in England, with membership to the "upper" house, 
the Senate, restricted to an Elitist class. The Monarchists still had a 
great deal of support in parts of the original thirteen states.

The western states, such as Tennessee, were more in favor of supporting a 
combined "Federal" action against Britain than were the seaboard 
colonies, as the British were arming the local Indian tribes and inciting 
uprisings in an effort to block westward expansion. Folks in Tennessee 
wanted Madison to invade Canada to choke off the supply route.

French-speaking New Orleans didn't much care for having been sold to a 
foreign power, and had closer ties to Spanish Florida than to its new 
masters in Washington. Andrew Jackson's army did not receive a very warm 
welcome when he came to "defend" the city form the British; he had 
difficulty obtaining supplies, and had to declare martial law to maintain 
control of the city.

The trade issues and the "kidnapping" of American merchant seamen are 
given as "official" reasons for the conflict, but there were many other 
reasons as well.

Without the War of 1812, the "United States" as a single entity may never 
have emerged, and a loose coalition of states may have remained in its 
place, probably as a British dependant. Britian would have likely 
succeeded in regulating western movement, at least in the northern part 
of North America, and we'd all be talking like Phil.

The War of 1812 had arguably as great an impact on the Federal vs. States 
issue as did the Civil War. Interesting to see you "justifiying" this. :)  

-r.w.

At 9:12 AM -0700 11/24/97, Rabid Wombat wrote:
>>
>> The last justifiable war the American states were involved in was,
>> arguably, the War of 1812. Every war since then has been unjustified.
>>
>> --Tim May
>>
>
>Chuckle. The "war" of 1812 was nearly as much of an internal political
>struggle over the form the U.S. gov't was to take as was the "civil war."

That's why I was careful to say, "arguably." It may or may not have been a
justifiable war, but at least it involved foreign powers acting on or
against actual domestic, contental soil. Something the various later wars
did not directly involve.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."