by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: March 02, 2010

Redistribution of wealth through taxes has been the pivotal force in preventing revolutions. When the wealth accrues to the elites to an extent that there is no substantial middle class, social and physical infrastructures, and abject poverty that leads to forms of indentured servitude or slavery, then there will eventually be revolution.

In a prosperous country, where there is room for growth in personal income, taxation prevents the people from spending their wealth on selfish interests and directs funds to the general interest. Without taxation, there would be limited education, poor roads, bad waste management, early deaths from lack of health care, virtually no regulation of such important things as food, pollution, environmental damage and even the law.

Why would this be? Because the extremely wealthy would tend to either limit quality road building, education and medical care to their own interests, while the rest of the population would be on their own. The wealthy would spend their money to excess on themselves while contributing to the common good on a completely unreliable basis. The wealthy would limit the benefits of the law to themselves and withhold access to justice from others. This would lead to the classic corruption that has formed in any society that does not collect taxes that support projects, regulation and programs for the common good.

When the treasury is looted by corrupt officials, that is different than filling the treasury in order to fund the activities that provide security, safety, justice, transportation, safe housing, disease management, waste management and social order. This means that the money has literally been stolen and misdirected by those who were placed in trust of the national treasury.

The excesses and corruptions of the Bush II administration are a case in point of a massive national treasury surplus turning into a massive deficit in only eight years, while the money was directed to hand picked, greedy and elite corporations and individuals.

The public is responsible for redistribution of wealth through other means than taxes. First, by failing to remove corrupt leaders. Second by using debt and cash to create wealth for individual entertainers, talk radio hosts, sports figures, and entrepreneurs of various sorts. Instead of calling for reasonable taxes on those massive incomes, the public allowed tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, with a "come what may" attitude.

As a result, tens of

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