Are taxes moral? I was reading a blog post today that argued that taking someone else’s property is theft and therefore immoral. If you earn it, it is yours to keep. Other arguments against taxes include that the accumulation of wealth denotes God‘s approval. Taxing that wealth away is going against God’s wishes. Personally, I have considered all forms of taxation, and I believe that the graduated income tax is the fairest of them all.

If you believe in democracy, rather than plutocracy, the rule of money, you will support the graduated income tax at higher percentages than today’s rate to slow the accumulation of great wealth. In addition, you will join me in supporting the death tax, the estate tax, to prevent great wealth from being passed intact from one generation to another. We can argue the morality of taxes ad infinitum, but the reality is that our democracy requires a level playing field where talent, not inherited riches, determines outcomes. This position was enunciated by one of our greatest members of the US Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, who sat on the Court from 1916 to 1939.