Episode 68: Your Taxes Today are WAY WORSE Than What The Founders Protested

The founders went to war over taxes far lighter than what leaves your paycheck today. So how did a country built on "no taxation without representation" end up with a tax system this BIG? How did spending become so high and widespread? In this episode, I dive into the establishment of the federal income tax from 1913, when the top rate was just 7% and the whole thing was sold as temporary, up to the 73% and 94% rates that came later under Woodrow Wilson and FDR. I get into what Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan understood about property and freedom, why a heavy progressive income tax is actually the second plank of the Communist Manifesto, and why Reagan called endless government growth "creeping socialism." 250 years in, this is a conversation we can't afford to stop having.