A (more) conservative friend (than I) sent me this. I don’t know why.
There’s also a poem.
Do these taxes exist? Some of them seem like stretches, like they’re taking fees that one has to pay for, say, using a toll road, and calling it a tax.
Also, was the United States “the most prosperous in the world, had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world”?
It was my understanding that the U.S. was something of a power among peers until WWII.
The national debt in 1909 appears to have been about 2.6 billion dollars.
They are also wrong in stating that “Mom stayed home to raise the kids.” Well, upper-class women stayed home and paid a nanny to raise the kids. Lower class women worked their ass off AND raised the kids AND often worked in factories and/or took in piecework and/or ran the farm.
Check out the book The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz.
Yep. That seems like an obvious sticking point. I hadn’t considered that. I was just thinking of the obvious argument that a family with two working parents can still be a good family (as mine was, I think)…along with the fact that women couldn’t even vote in 1909 and still, I believe, don’t get paid as much as men in many cases for the same work.
So, what about prosperity? and all those supposed taxes?
I don’t doubt that all of those taxes exist in at least some places in the USA. The reasons why they didn’t exist a hundred years ago are obvious, at least in some cases. Septic permit tax? There were no septic tanks. Vehicle registration taxes? There were almost no vehicles back then. Bridges and tunnels? There were a lot fewer.
It is true, though, that government control over most things has expanded greatly.
All that “prosperity?” Please. Things we consider routine now weren’t even thought of 100 years ago. As was said earlier, no Workers’ Compensation tax? Yep. No workers’ comp, either. You got hurt on the job, gee, tough cheeze for you. I don’t know what Federal Unemployment Tax is, that sure isn’t a deduction on my paycheck. I do pay state unemployment tax, but then when I was unemployed, I got some cash from the state, too. A hundred years ago, golly, too bad. Kids are gonna be hungry this month.
Some of the items in the list are outright ridiculous. Court fines are not a tax. And I’m sure that courts throughout our history have imposed fines. Nothing new. As far as I know, there is no “Inheritance Tax Interest expense (tax on the money).” I don’t even know what that means, but my sister and I paid no tax on our father’s estate, not that there was much there to tax, and my husband paid no tax on his mother’s estate. Perhaps they mean that if my father’s estate had $150.00 in the bank, and before the estate was distributed it paid a penny or so in interest, I suppose that might have been taxable. It would have had to be a whopping big estate before it mattered, though, and in any case that’s the same case as income tax, not a separate item.
'Tis a silly message. Pay it no mind.
Whoa there, Nelly. I have a 140-year-old house with a septic tank, homemade of concrete, that is at least 100 years old. Still functioning just fine, thank you. No taxes on it, so be quiet and don’t give them any ideas. 
There were rather primitive, first generation automobiles 100 years ago. And, certainly their were wagons, both for private use and livery.
Many of the bridges in tunnels in NYC were built in the late 1800s. I’m sure it’s the same in other places.
I know it hardly seems like it has been 100 years since those things came into being. Where DOES the time go? 
Piffle. Every fee is not a tax. You pay a marriage license fee which is probably pretty close to the clerical cost of handling your paperwork. Unless you’re Larry King, you pay it once and you’re done. Luxury tax? Never paid it. They’re counting school tax twice, since it’s part of property tax. The average American pays maybe on 1/4 the items on that list. It might be more instructive to list the benefits that we get because of the taxes- roads, meat inspection, drug testing, unemployment benefits, SS benefits, etc.
In trying to find statistics on “prosperity” and the “largest middle class,” I’m stuck. Where exactly would one go to find a comparison of economies in, say, 1910? Also, isn’t the New Deal usually attributed with the creation of the “world’s largest middle class”? or is that just something that liberals like to claim?
In 1909, one would have to put farmers in the “middle class” for the statement in the link to be even arguably true, unless they are just asserting raw numbers, in which case it’s silly to make that comparison at all.
Why? Was there a larger middle class somewhere?
Certain parts of Europe were more densely populated, more urban, by then, reflecting a shift from a primarily farming economy to an industrial economy. America, while it had its industrial areas, still had the vast majority of its states relatively sparsely populated, with an agrarian emphasis.
One hundred years ago the only countries larger than the U.S. were China, India, and Russia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1907
Hence there were no reasonably well off countries with a larger population than the U.S. at that point. If you assume the U.S. had approximately the same proportion of middle-class people as other reasonably well off countries, then the U.S. had the largest middle class at the time, even though the U.S. wasn’t on average richer than a number of other countries.
We’ve taxed strange things in history. In England in the 19th century there were taxes on “land, income, the practice of law, newspaper advertisements, glass, candles, beer, malt carriages, menservants, coats of arms, newspapers, paper, bricks, stone, coal, windows, corn, soap, horses, dogs, salt, sugar, raisins, tea, coffee, tobacco, playing cards, timber, silk…”
(From What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew).
The Romans taxed beards.
Economies worked differently in the 19th century. Tariffs were a much larger part of the federal government’s income.
No liquor tax? So what was the Whiskey Rebellion all about?