Book Reviews

Money is a commodity like any other, as Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises showed, but a commodity that was gradually settled on by market participants as the most liquid commod ity, that is, the thing most readily accepted and held by other people for use in economic trans actions. There is one difference, however, as Murray Rothbard pointed out, between a monetary com modity and other commodities. All other things being equal, we are better offwith more tomatoes or refrigerators than fewer. But we are not better off with more money. Any amount of money is optimal. It makes no difference, economically, if a loaf of bread costs two cents or two dollars, provided either amount is the same portion of the total. But it makes a tremendous difference ifthe amount of money in circulation is artificially increased. Before the invention of paper money, the king's agents would clip the edges off the coins, and demand that the people accept them at their old value. Or the government would call in the coins, melt them down, and reissue them at the old value but with less precious metal.

Things got worse with the invention of paper money, since there was a limit to the debasement of gold and silver coins, and they could not be printed up on a government printing press at will. And things got much worse with the intro duction of central banking, perhaps the most 57 disastrous step in economic policy ever taken. As demonstrated by our own beloved Federal Reserve System, under central banking, the government can inflate until the cows come home, and unlike the more honest forms of crookery dominant in past ages, pass it off as a normal or even necessary part of the economy. Indeed, anti-gold Keynesian economists would claim exactly that. Former Vice President Walter Mondale was once heard to say, after a briefing by an econo mist during the 1984 presidential campaign, "Now I finallyunderstand the Federal Reserve." Well, probably not, but it shows another prob lem. The Fed obfuscates. It's a giant fog ma chine, designed to fool the victims of its policies, i.e., most of us. In the process, it even fools some of the politicians, as I discovered during my terms in the House of Representatives.

Fed disinformation is politically necessary. After all, although it was founded to inflate, that is, to depreciate the dollar for the benefit of the government and its friends, it can't very well admit to that. Why, the voters might get angry. So instead, we get such howlers as the press telling us that the Fed is "fighting inflation," when all it does is inflate, as well as cartelize the banking industry, allowing it to inflate in unison with the central bank. The Fed also causes the business cycle, re cessions, and depressions, as Mises demon strated, bringing about immense suffering. The establishment of the Fed also meant the gradual destruction of the gold standard that had made possible the freedom and prosperity of the nineteenth century. (Not that the period was monetarily idyllic. We also had two early central banks and Lincoln's greenback inflation, for example.) When the Fed was established under Woodrow Wilson, another warmonger, in 1913,the gold cover on the currency was reduced to 40 percent. Then our third great warmongering president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, confiscatedthe people's gold, and took America offthe domestic gold standard.

Warmongers Johnson and Nixon finished off even that attenuated gold standard in 1968 and 1971 (did I mention that the Fed makes the funding of war much easier?), and since then, we have been on a pure fiat standard. A pure fiat money standard is not only eco nomically and politically disastrous, it is also a moral calamity, as the decline of our nation in that sphere has also shown, since-among other things-inflation encourages profligacy and pe nalizes thrift. Yet, with the weakness ofthe dollar 58 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1996 on international exchanges, not to speak of people's increasing worries about the future and doubts about the government, I believe we are coming to a time when an alternative can be considered: honest money, hard money, and sound money-the gold standard. Certainly the idea has somewhat more academic and political support than in the past, when Keynesian eco nomics ruled almost unchallenged.

How appropriate, then, is the publication of The Lustre of Gold. One of the great things Hans F. Sennholz has done since assuming the helm at FEE is to publish a series called "The Freeman Classics," which collect the great es says from that journal by topic. This is one of the best. Its 17 essays represent an impassioned and eloquent argument for the gold standard as the only money worthy ofa free and civilizedpeople. Five pieces by Henry Hazlitt and three by Dr. Sennholz are the stars, but there are also excel lent contributions from such men as Elgin Grose close, Lawrence Reed, Mark Skousen, and Rob ert Anderson, with a learned and rousing introduction by Dr. Sennholz as well. All point to the same conclusion. We, and indeed the entire world, need, in the words of Hazlitt, a "100 percent reserve gold standard." Only this system, and not the watered-down varieties like the gold-exchange standard, can abolish inflationand the business cycle, eliminate the partial barter system of fluctuating fiat cur rencies internationally, and give to our people the sort of sound economic growth that capital ism promises, but has not delivered since the evil day in 1971 when Nixon removed the last gold restraint on the Fed.

In our most productive periods, money was worth more every year, as its.supply increased very slowly through gold mining, and the supply of goods and services exploded through near laissez faire. It sounds like science fiction now, but savers were rewarded by seeing their sav ings buy more at retirement than when they were put away. There was no central bank, no welfare state, and no warfare state. This is how a free market, gold standard America worked. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, and of our liberty and pros perity, may it be so again. 0 Former Congressman Ron Paul was a co founder and member of the U.S. Gold Commis sion, where he brought about the restored mint ing of American gold coins. Dr. Paul is also author of Gold, Peace, and Prosperity and co author of The Case for Gold. Loving Your Neighbor: A Principled Guide to Personal Charity Edited by Marvin Olasky Capital Research Center. 1995 • 146 + vi pages. $15.00 paperback Reviewed by Montgomery B. Brown L oving Your Neighbor is essentially a sequel to The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky's highly influential history of efforts to fight poverty in America. The earlier work shows how, over time, the spiritual foun dation and personal character of assistance to the needy in our country wel."elargely undermined by expansive government programs. Each chapter of Loving Your Neighbor describes a particular organization or program for helpingthe poor, and each confirms lessons drawn from Olasky's his tory: the successful ventures are typically spiri tually grounded, private, and modest in scale, while the secular and more ambitious public programs are mostly ineffective and often harm ful.

Loving Your Neighbor contains a dozen es says previously published in the Capital Re search Center's newsletter Philanthropy, Cul ture, and Society. Olasky himself wrote three and co-wrote another. The collection is divided into three sections: one describing efforts to help homeless Pfople, one portraying youth pro grams, and/one on urban renewal projects. (One of the chapters on helping the homeless was written by Gerald Wisz, who profiled the same organization for The Freeman's October 1994 issue.) The essays are united by simple principles that Olasky restates in the afterword to Loving Your Neighbor: "think small, and think of souls rather than bodies." Every successful program depicted has a re ligious, or more precisely, biblical basis that gives it guidance and stability. To begin with, the Bible instructs those working for charities that the needs of the poor go well beyond the financial or material. It teaches that more than wealth is needed to build (or rebuild) a community, more than square meals to nourish a child. A biblical underpinning is also invaluable in sustaining volunteers who labor in a field with small re wards, frequent failures, and strenuous demands for patience and humility.

Successful efforts also draw from the Bible the conviction that true charity cannot undermine the responsibility of those who receive it; on the contrary it must promote responsibility. In most cases that need is met initially by demanding work and good behavior from those who accept food, shelter, housing, or other goods. In the same way, providing meals that allow addicts to spend more money on drugs or booze is rightly seen not as helping, but harming, the recipients. Because the problems of the underclass and its neighborhoods are deeply rooted and almost invariably call for changed habits, a small scale is imperative for success. Modest size allows for the moral support as wellas the accountability that together can turn around a wayward indi vidual or community. As the size and scope of efforts to help the poor increase, there is a persistent tendency for a misguided set of prior ities to take over. The number of people being "served" and the level of help (typically mea sured in dollars) that each client receives become the standards of excellence. This is the all-too familiar phenomenon of allowing a process to become more important than the outcome it was designed to bring about.

Loving Your Neighbor will not be a smashing success like The Tragedy ofAmerican Compas sion. But for people who work with the poor it will provide useful examples and illustrations to reinforce the basic principles in Olasky's previ om~~. D Mr. Brown is Director of Publications at The Philanthropy Roundtable in Indianapolis, Indi ana. The True State of the Planet Edited by Ronald Bailey The Free Press. 1995 • 472 pages. $15.00 paperback Reviewed by Matthew Carolan T hose who have studied logic or critical think ing are probably familiar with the informal fallacy of the "false dilemma," a kind of pseudo argument in which a speaker pushes you into agreeing with him, or accepting an unwanted alternative. For example: if we don't raise taxes to save this program, then (fill in the blank) will be Itdevastated." This kind of thinking, so com mon today, also arrogantly sweeps aside any mediating role for the rest of humanity, as the speaker implies that only he or she "cares"

enough to "help." BOOKS 59 According to recent polls, the public has for the most part bought this fallacy when it is applied to environmental regulation, displaying a remarkable willingness to trade freedom for "a clean environment." This is due perhaps to anecdotal experience with human selfishness, or dead fish. But, this is also due, no doubt, to general ignorance about the way property rights and the free market work to mediate dilemmas affecting the public good. What's more, as we have seen in Congress of late, environmental issues are so complex that even a good number of limitedgovernment advocates have difficulty explaining exactly how the market can protect the environment. The True State ofthe Planet makes two major contributions toward greater articulation. First, it makes a common body of evidence available to the reader, to make reasonable environmental judgments and predictions possible. Second, in straightforward language, based on that evi dence, the book conveys a remarkable alterna tive vision of the role property rights and free markets have played, and can play, in enhancing the quality of the planet.

In a series of ten essays, prologue, epilogue, appendix, and tables of environmental standards or "benchmarks," from a variety of scholars, this book reports what is for the most part wonderful, exciting news about dear old Gaia. For example, Nicholas Eberstadt shows, contra Malthus, .that population growth has led to an explosion of human productivity and resources. His point is complemented by Dennis Avery's educational survey of the phenomenal success of the Green Revolution. Indur Goklany shows, counterintuitively, that air quality has been steadily improving thanks to technological inno vation. Stephen Moore, delving into metaphys ics, argues that we must take stock of the non material or spiritual side of our success with resources, which only suggests unlimited poten tialfor growth. Meanwhile Fred Smith's epilogue provides an excellent wrap-up by explaining how differingworldviews shape the environmen tal debate. These are but a few of the fine essays.

While there are the occasional speed bumps of technical jargon along the way, and even some dry prose in spots, this book is nevertheless a terrificprimer for the man-on-the-street advocate of free markets, who, I suspect, is like me lacking in intellectual ammunition in this area more than most others. Here, population growth, air and water quality, food, energy, and resource supply, species extinction, and environmental carcinogens, are all discussed, with numerous 60 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1996 photos and charts to assist in understanding. Once you give this book some concerted study, it may turn you into what Fred Smith calls a "comucopian." A suitable philosophy for those who believe there are a wealth more people around to "care" than government bureaucrats. 0 Mr. Carolan is Executive Editor of National Review. Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High Yield Farming by Dennis T. Avery Hudson Institute. 1995 • 432 pages. $12.95 paperback Reviewed by E. C. Pasour, Jr.

T he media is all too eager to spread the message of" doom and gloom" environmen talists. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers pose an imminent and growing threat both to human health and to wildlife. Population growth is spiraling upward out of control and high tech methods of farming are not "sustainable." The solution in this view is to eliminate or to drasti cally reduce the use of manufactured chemicals in the production of food and fiber. Dennis Avery's new work is an effective antidote to this conventional wisdom that high yield agriculture poses a threat to human health and the environment. Avery, an agricultural economist, spent 30 years in the federal estab lishment, serving both in the Department of Agriculture and the State Department. First, the author shows that the doomsday prophets, including Rachel Carson, are often wrong on the facts. Pesticide residues are not a significanthealth risk. Indeed, the natural chem icals in foods are more dangerous than pesticide residues, according to Dr. Bruce Ames, the noted biochemist and molecular biologist at the Uni versity of California at Berkeley.

The use of DDT, contra Rachel Carson, is not a serious threat to humans and did not decimate the population of wild birds. The EPA adminis trator banned DDT not because there was dem onstrated harm but because he feared a political backlash from readers of Silent Spring. World population is not spiraling out of con trol. The most likely projection is that population will rise from the current level of 5.4 billion to peak at eight billionpeople in 2030and then trend downward for the rest of the century. Moreover, economic conditions are a key factor in the population equation. Birth rates, usually high in poor countries, invariably decrease with eco nomic development. Second, Avery shows that environmentalists' pleas for chemical-free farming, if successful, would harm both human health and the environ ment, particularly wildlife. The way to preserve wildlife is to save its habitat. However, the elimination of, or significant reduction in, the use of farm chemicals would mean a substantial increase in land area cropped-and reduction in wildlife habitat. Thus, by preserving habitat, the current system of high-yield farming helps protect wildlife!

Pesticide use, strange as it may seem, is also a boon to public health. Eating more fruits and vegetables can cut cancer risk by 50 percent and markedly reduce heart disease. However, only 9 percent of U.S. consumers eat the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Thus, anything that reduces consumption of fruits and vegetables will cost lives. Pesticides are critically important in assuring ample year round supplies of reasonably priced and attrac tive fruits and vegetables. Eliminating pesticides would mean lower yields, higher prices and reduced consumption of fruits and vegetables and higher cancer rates! The defense of high-yield farming is not a defense of the status quo. Avery explores the environmental implications of protectionist pol icies that prevent sugar and other farm products from being produced in areas of their compara tive advantage. Such policies distort the pattern of production of farm products, create environ mental problems, and lead to the use of more farm chemicals. For example, farm programs in the United States and Western Europe create artificial incentives for farmers to increase yields and lead to overuse of fertilizers and pesticides.

This book makes a compelling case that high yield agriculture and free trade throughout the world are the best ways to protect human health and environmental resources. This approach is not risk-free but is far less risky than the alternatives. 0 Dr. Pasour is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University.

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell Basic Books. 1995 • 305 pages. $25.00 Reviewed by Thomas J. DiLorenzo A t a June 1993 luncheon at the Heritage Foundation, I had the privilege of sitting next to Tom Sowell and discussing current events with him. I asked him what he made of the bizarre phenomenon of famous "peaceniks," such as former Senator George McGovern, publicly call ing for the carpet bombing of Bosnia. "The Left always has to be morally one up," was his response. This statement, it turns out, is the theme of Sowell's latest book, The Vision of the Anointed. A more precise definition of this "vi sion" is stated in the subtitle: "Self-Congratula tion as a Basis for Social Policy." The prevailing vision or world view of the intellectual and political elite of our time, Sowell writes, is "a vision of differential rectitude ....

Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed. " All the crusades of the anointed over the past century-from eugen ics to environmentalism, Communism, Keynesi anism, the welfare-regulatory state, etc.-share several key elements, according to Sowell: 1. Assertions that a great disaster to society is about to occur. 2. Calls for massive government intervention to avert the impending catastrophe. 3. Disdainful dismissal of contrary arguments as uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by "unworthy purposes." 4. The policies of the anointed are imple mented and are themselves disastrous. 5. The anointed steadfastly refuse to acknowl edge mountains of evidence that their policies have failed while accusing their critics of dark motives. The meat of the book is a careful empirical analysis of dozens of politically-correct policies and theories, from the "war on poverty" to crime, environmentalism, the public school mo nopoly, affirmative action, and many others. In each case, Sowell shows how the anointed simply ignore evidence (and common sense), invent vocabulary designed to preempt issues rather than debate them (Le., referring to the U.S.

Postal Service, but not your typical grocery BOOKS 61 store, as a "public service"), and persistently declare their moral superiority over those who would disagree with them. Those who maintain this vision tend to be power-hungry egomaniacs who prefer that their own personal preferences "supersede the' pref erences of everyone else. " Government dictates are to supersede both democracy and markets in order to impose "solutions based on their [the anointed's] own presumably superior knowledge and virtue." This book is must reading for those who wish to understand the mindset of the statists who dominate politics, the media, and academe. It is an excellent companion to Sowell's earlier book, A Conflict of Visions, and I also found it to be quite similar in many regards to Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Unlike Hayek, however, Sow ell accuses his intellectual opponents of consid erably more than mere intellectual error. 0 Dr. DiLorenzo is Professor of Economics in the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Maryland.

The Tax Racket: Government Extortion from A to Z by Martin L. Gross Ballentine Books. 1995 • 319 pages. $12.00 paperback Reviewed by Raymond J. Keating E very tax levied by government somehow distorts economic decision-making and drains resources away from productive private sector ventures. As Jean-Baptiste Say succinctly observed in his Treatise on Political Economy, "Taxes and restrictive measures never can be a benefit: they are at best a necessary evil. . . ." Living in a misguided century, where big government mistakenly has come to be seen as a benevolent problem solver, individuals often avoid thinking about the many evils of taxation. Thankfully, Martin Gross' book The Tax Racket: Government Extortion from A to Z serves as a stark reminder. If the reader seeks an academic treatise on the economics of taxation, he should probably look elsewhere. The Tax Racket is meant to stir America's anti-tax spirit. It surely accomplishes this mission. With little subtlety, Gross reveals the many costs and problems wrought by differ ent forms of taxation. From airline levies and 62 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1996 audits to withholding taxes and "zany tax sto ries," Gross does indeed explain the evils of taxation from "A to Z."

Along the way, the author offers some sound reform measures as well. For example, he calls for the elimination of capital gains taxes, the eventual privatization of Social Security as Chile has done, the end of county government and its commensurate tax burden, and believes that the IRS should be held accountable to a document called the Bill of Rights. The primary target of The Tax Racket is the income tax. Gross essentially argues-and cor rectly I think-that the income tax remains the greatest evil among many evils. By its intrusive nature and legions of government IRS agents, the income tax constitutes an immediate affront to individual liberty . By directly raising the costs of working, investing, and risk-taking, the income tax quells economic growth and opportunity. As it was born by class warfare rhetoric, the income tax continues to feed mistaken and dangerous class-based thinking. As already noted, every tax brings with it many problems, but none seem ingly so vast and distasteful as the income tax.

Gross wisely argues for disposing of all income taxes-federal, state, and local. Before getting into what kind of tax should replace the income tax, he first outlines a plan for greatly reducing the size of government. So while Gross calls for the income tax to be replaced partially with a national retail sales tax (bringing with it a differ ent, though less severe, set of problems), Gross understands that the most sound" substitute" for an income tax is substantial government spend ing reductions. In the perverse vernacular of today's public policy debates, a suggestion to cut taxes is met by the question: how will you "pay for" your tax cut? The best answer remains: cut government spending. When combining The Tax Racket with two of his previous bestsellers-The Government Rack et: Washington Waste from A to Z and A Call for Revolution: How Washington Is Strangling America-And How to Stop It-one realizes that Martin Gross may indeed be the Stephen King of the anti-government crowd. That is, he tells horror stories in an entertaining fashion. Fortu nately, though, if his advice eventually is heeded on eliminating the income tax and cutting gov ernment spending, the story will have a happy ending. D Mr. Keating is chief economist for the Small Business Survival Foundation.

Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz Knopf. 1994 • 487 pages. $24.00 Reviewed by Russell Madden H ad this novel been released after the bomb ing of the Oklahoma federal building, it would no doubt be condemned by the Washing ton establishment as paranoid, extremist, hate filled, and un-American. In its criticism of the abuses committed by those possessing the weapon of government power, Dark Rivers of the Heart pulls no punches. Though Koontz's name is most closely associated with the horror genre, in his latest tale he portrays monsters of a different stripe: the dedicated servants of a secret governmental department which has taken upon itself the roles of judge, jury, and execu tioner. The prime mover of this extra-legal organiza tion is Roy Miro, "an equal-opportunity killer." The portrayal of this "slightly pudgy" yet "ap pealing, soft-featured" public servant as a "com passionate" man dedicated to moving our cul ture one small step at a time towards perfection and true equalityis chillingin its cumulativeeffect.

Despite his "tender" disposition, Roy is not above giving a "comeuppance" to those who would thwart his goals or slight his character. He relishes opportunities to even scores against anyone who dares to disagree with his noble vision of "order, stability, and justice. " Captain Harris Descoteaux of the LAPD discovers this to his horror when he is plunged into a continuing nightmare of manufactured charges, planted ev idence, and property seizure which leaves him and his family destitute, homeless, and fearing for their lives. Perhaps most frightening about Roy, however, is the fact that many people in this country would see nothing unusual about his views. For Roy, utopia will arrive when everyone is identical to everyone else, when morality is recognized as a relative guide in which the ends justify the means, when "social security and peace" are more valued than freedom; when it is acknowledged that anyone "obsessed with his privacy [is] an enemy of the people"; when the world envi sioned in John Lennon's song, "Imagine," be comes a reality.

Exciting and suspenseful as the story is, the truly refreshing aspect of the book is the way in which Koontz takes on the government and defends freedom, reason, and individuality. As set forfeiture, environmental zealots, power hungry politicians, and the dangers and benefits of an overly computerized society all come under his scrutiny. Dark Rivers of the Heart touches upon a variety of subjects of interest to friends of free dom: the dangers of relying upon a "compas sionate" government to solve our problems, how satellite surveillance, interconnecting computer data bases, and other elements of burgeoning high technology can be used to subvert our rights as well as to provide us with the latest in entertainment. Whether he is exploring the naBOOKS 63 ture of the drug war, the excesses of the BATF, EPA, and DEA, or the abuses exhibited in the cases of Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidi ans, Koontz's ability to dramatize the negative effects of such issues is not only entertaining but educational. Too frequently, discussions of out of-control government fail to combine emotional with intellectual arguments. With its broad ap peal, Koontz's fiction may alarm people enough to ignite discussion of these critical issues on a wide scale. 0 Mr. Madden is an instructor in communications at Mt. Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Free Enterprise Institute Attention teachers, parents and high school students The Free Enterprise Institute announces its 1995-1996 Economics in One Lesson Essay Contest. High school students are invited to com pete for $7,500 in college scholar ships. Economics in One Lesson was written by Henry Hazlitt, a former financial editor for The New York Times and business columnist for Newsweek. The book was praised by Nobel prize-winning economist EA. Hayek as "a brilliant performance." It explains broad economic concepts that students can apply to current events, public policy issues, history and other subjects. Students compete for $7,500 in scholarship money which is distributed as follows: one $3,000 first place scholarship, two second place $1,000 scholarships and five third place $500 scholarships. The teacher who sponsors each winning student will also be awarded prize money: $300 to the teacher named by the first place winner, $200 each for second place and $100 each for third place winners.

Contest rules, a study guide and copies of Economics in One Lesson may be obtained by contacting the Free Enterprise Institute. Deadline for essays is May 3, 1996. The Free Enterprise Institute 9525 Katy Freeway, Suite 303 Houston, Texas 77024 Phone: (800) 884-2189; Fax: (713) 984-0409 E-Mail PAMich@aol.com Landmark Kirk Memoir Lowest Price Anywhere! "RussellKirksfinal work is a tributeto him as a seminalthinker... .A wondeiful read, indispensableto those interestedin a conservativesview ofa half century.)J -WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. R ussell Kirk's memoir and last work, The Sword of Imagination, is as much a chronicle of the confusion and perplexities of the twentieth century as it is autobiography. Its portraits of Henry Ford, Flannery O'Connor, the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, T. S. Eliot, Donald Davidson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and other notables are un surpassed. Kirk's keen insight into the minds of children, his romantic courtship, his perceptions of human nature, his adventures in dark corners are here for readers to enjoy. Writing from Mecosta, a remote village in the backwoods of northern Michi gan' Kirk wielded his sword of imagination, laying bare the conceits of a sensate age.

Cloth, 497 pp. +Illustrations, List: $34.99, lSI: $24.00 1---------------------------1 Send this coupon to: lSI, 14 S. Bryn Mawr Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-3275, or for credit card orders call 1-800-526-7022 (please add 50¢1copy to help with shipping and handling). Name _ Address Apt. _ City State Zipcode _ o Enclosed is a $ check for _ copies ($24.00/copy) of Sword. o Enter my credit card order for __ copies ($24.001 copy) of Sword. I wish to pay by: 0 VISA 0 MasterCard Signature: _ Account# Exp. date FEE 1/96 L ~ INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDIES INSTITUTE To Educate for Liberty 68 70 72 77 80 83 88 91 93 98 102 109 Center 75 85 100 116 67 119 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY FEATURES How High a Price for Civilization? by Stephen Gold How much government spending is actually necessary? Original Intent and the Income Tax by Raymond J. Keating Today's heavy progressive levies barely resemble the 1913 rates.