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The necessity of making such valuations has given rise to an important problem. It is the problem of industrial insurance. You who read this are interested in this problem because at present you help bear the cost of these industrial accidents. The workingman is interested because it is a question of comfort or misery for him and his family, the employer is interested because it means dollars and cents to him; but you also are interested because you are a member of society, and society must care for those who are rendered dependent through injury. Why We Need an Income Tax Senator William E. Borah july 17, 1909 The income tax is the fairest and most equitable of the taxes. It is the one tax which approaches us in the hour of prosperity and departs in the hour of adversity. The farmer, though he may have lost his entire crop, must meet the taxes levied upon his property. The merchant, though on the verge of bankruptcy, must respond to the taxes imposed. The laborer, who goes to the store to buy his food, though it be his last, must buy with whatever extra cost there may be imposed by reason of custom duties. But the income tax is to be met only after you have realized your income. After you have met your expenses, provided for your family, paid for the education of your children for that year, then provided you have an income left, you turn to meet the obligations you owe to the government. For instance, according to amendments recently pending relative to the income tax, a man with an income of $10,000 would pay the modest sum of $100. “Man as a human being owes services to his fellows and one of the Wrst of these is to support the government which makes civilization possible.” I think those who advocate the income tax merely as a revenue-producing proposition rob the proposition of its moral foundation. We should contend for an income tax not simply for the purpose of raising revenue but for the purpose of framing a revenue system which will distribute the burdens of government between consumption and accumulated wealth, which will enable us to call upon property and wealth not in an unfair and burdensome way but in a just and equitable way to meet their proportionate expenses of the government, for certainly it will be conceded by all that the great expense of government is in the protection of property and of wealth. A tax placed upon consumption is based upon what men want and must have. A tax placed upon wealth falls upon those who have enough and to spare and therefore have more which it is necessary for the government to protect. Borah / Why We Need an Income Tax 283 The general government has its armies and its navies and its great burden of expense for the purpose among other things of protecting property, protecting gathered and accumulated wealth, and enabling men to make fortunes and to preserve their fortunes, and there is no possible argument founded in law or in morals why these protected interests should not bear their proportionate burden of government. We simply call upon those who have the good fortune to have accumulated wealth to respond to the expenses of the great government under which they live and thrive. The Need for Health Insurance Irving Fisher january 1917 At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without universal health insurance. For a generation, the enlightened nations of Europe have one after another discussed the idea and followed discussion by adoption. It has constituted an important part of the policy and career of some of Europe’s greatest statesmen, including Bismarck and Lloyd George. The need of health insurance, like that of most other forms of insurance, is twofold. There is the need of indemniWcation against loss and the need of diminishing the loss itself. It is more economical to pay a little premium for the Wre insurance each year than to su¤er a big loss when the Wre comes. It is the poor whose need of health insurance is greatest. Millions of American workmen cannot at present avail themselves of necessary medical, surgical, and nursing aid. Health insurance is like elementary education. In order that it shall function properly its needs must be universal and in order to be universal, it must be obligatory. In health insurance...

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