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April 16, 2009
ELVIS DINGELDEIN’S “A BRIEF HISTORY OF TAXATION”
PART I: COLONIAL TIMES
Oh, Colonial America! You were so much easier to manage, with your Free Brown Labor and your Enlightenment Thinking*! With no such thing as “roads” yet to build, Social Security unnecessary in a time where The Elderly was anyone over 28, and National Defense consisting of two guys named Ezekiel with muzzle-loaded pitchforks, young colonial America had little need of taxation. To pay for meager local government services such as Wig Powdering and Fop Lessons, Southern colonies relied on import and export taxes (and tens of millions of hours of Free Brown Labor, huzzah!), New England taxed real estate, and the middle colonies sat quietly in a corner and tried not to piss the other two off.
Great Britain (“Kicking Brown People In The Ass & Taking Their Shit Since 1583”), however, loved her some Taxation; especially the kind that conveniently omitted The Representations. (This practice would inspire the great anti-taxation battle cry, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!”, which to this day no one understands.) But hey, Empires don’t pay for themselves, you know, and what’s the point of Oppressing various Masses if you can’t also levy fun and delicious new taxes on their asses?
Unfortunately for the British, their Tax Collection Skills were something of The Suck. The Molasses Act of 1733 failed spectacularly after Colonials discovered their local Customs Official could be bribed with half a tankard of warm beer and a mildly arthritic goose, and the Sugar Act of 1764 lost its teeth when Benjamin Franklin accidentally discovered High-Fructose Corn Syrup after tying a kite to an Indian soaked in molasses and holding an ear of “maize” during a hail storm. (Franklin avoided paying taxes on the molasses by bribing his local Customs Official, who, conveniently, was himself, with a pair of prostitutes named Lydia and “Cookie.”)
So, finding herself drowning in debt after The Seven Years War, Great Britain thought it would be “bally brilliant!” if Americans footed the bill for garrisoning British troops in their own home towns -- which often required entire platoons to sleep on top of your Aunt Martha -- and imposed the Stamp Act of 1765. This caused nearly everyone in The Colonies to go immediately and unequivocally Ape Shit. Once they had secured the proper Royal Permitage, of course.
And then there was The Boston Tea Party™. Oh, the Tea Party! But that’s another story.
* If you find these things Annoyingly Mutually Exclusive, welcome to America, friend! Exporters of Maddening Irony Since 1776!
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Posted By Elvis | April 16, 2009 4:47 PM
Comments
Out-fucking-standing!
I await the other installments.
Posted by: Lexaburn at April 16, 2009 5:35 PM
See, we could avoid all of this Hullabaloo™ and Goings On© if we would just all vote for the Objectivist Party. If only Ayn Rand had been around to teach us then, all of the Colonies could have just Galt'd off into the Red White & Wild Blue Yonder and we'd... all probably be dead right now.
(Yeah, they're a real party. For you Colorado Cescans out there, you'll be interested to know that they .01%, or 336 votes in our lovely state. Also, their VP candidate was named Alden Link, who sounds kinda like an Ayn Rand name.)
Posted by: ElMystico at April 16, 2009 5:38 PM
See, we could avoid all of this Hullabaloo™ and Goings On© if we would just all vote for the Objectivist Party. If only Ayn Rand had been around to teach us then, all of the Colonies could have just Galt'd off into the Red White & Wild Blue Yonder and we'd... all probably be dead right now.
(Yeah, they're a real party. For you Colorado Cescans out there, you'll be interested to know that they .01%, or 336 votes in our lovely state. Also, their VP candidate was named Alden Link, who sounds kinda like an Ayn Rand name.)
Posted by: ElMystico at April 16, 2009 5:42 PM
Anxiously awaiting the upcoming chapter that includes the building of the railroads!
Maybe not the next chapter, or even the chapter after the next chapter, but a future chapter no doubt!
Light rail would be much more feasible if we could use cheap immigrant labor!
In fact, we could begin by abolishing child labor laws ..... err, why not all labor laws?????
Damn it! John Galt had the answer and we fucked him over! Now we'll never have the answer!
All the people with the answers moved to Xanadu and the rest of us are just fucked!
Posted by: kansasdem at April 16, 2009 5:46 PM
If only more of history was written in such a way.
Out-damn-standing!
Posted by: Frateloder at April 16, 2009 5:47 PM
See, we could avoid all of this Hullabaloo™ and Goings On© if we would just all vote for the Objectivist Party. If only Ayn Rand had been around to teach us then, all of the Colonies could have just Galt'd off into the Red White & Wild Blue Yonder and we'd... all probably be dead right now.
(Yeah, they're a real party. For you Colorado Cescans out there, you'll be interested to know that they .01%, or 336 votes in our lovely state. Also, their VP candidate was named Alden Link, who sounds kinda like an Ayn Rand name.)
Posted by: ElMystico at April 16, 2009 5:50 PM
Holy crap...triple post. My apologies. I was waiting like 10 minutes for the damn thing to post (seriously) and then when it does it just blows indiscriminately all over the...y'know...thing. I blame Ayn Rand.
Posted by: ElMystico at April 16, 2009 5:51 PM
More! More!
QT
Posted by: QueenTiye at April 16, 2009 6:26 PM
The funniest so far of the Revisionist Histories, huzzah!
But New England paid for its Molasses Act sass 200 years later, when Boston was consumed by the Molasses Flood of 1919. (21 killed and 150 "injured." And please don't ask me why Bostonians can't outrun molasses in January.)
Posted by: CycloCynic at April 16, 2009 9:40 PM
Brilliant.
It kind of reminds me of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Fractured Fairy Tales meets "A People's History of the United States."
Fun stuff.
Posted by: MrBrink at April 17, 2009 8:23 PM
