I haven’t heard much about Neil Boortz and his Fair Tax lately. But I was reminded of it when reading Chapter One of “The Whiskey Rebellion : Frontier epilogue to the American Revolution” by Thomas Slaughter (1986). I’m reading it in preparation for a bicycle tour later this summer.
Fair Tax proponents think a sales tax would be unobtrusive. But here is how one writer described the enforcement of a sales tax (known then as an excise tax) in 18th century Britain.
Excise, a monster worse than e’er before
Frighted the midwife, and the mother tore.
A thousand hands she has, a thousand eyes.
Breaks into shops, and into cellars pries;
With hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds,
And on all trades, like Casawar, she feeds. . . .
She stalks all day in streets, conceal’d from sight,
And flies like bats with leathern wings by night;
She wastes the country, and on cities preys.