Founding Fathers Say Tax the Rich

Alexander Hamilton First Secretary of the Treasury

Regarding "the exercise of the power of internal taxation" founding father, first Secretary of the Treasury, and leader of the constitutional convention, Alexander Hamilton, argues in Federalist Paper No. 36 "make it a fixed point of policy in the national administration to go as far as may be practicable in making the luxury of the rich tributary to the public treasury, in order to diminish the necessity of those impositions which might create dissatisfaction in the poorer and most numerous classes of the society. Happy it is when the interest which the government has in the preservation of its own power, coincides with a proper distribution of the public burdens, and tends to guard the least wealthy part of the community from oppression!"

Panderbear imagines leaders and members of the modern Republican Party and Tea Party must look askance at what one of their revered forebears had to say about distribution of the tax burden. That is, they would if they actually read what Representative Michele Bachmann refers to as "sacred" documents. Hamilton's tax-the-rich philosophy is anathema to these latter day disciples of trickle-down economics, don't-tax-job-creators tax policy, and all things constitutional.

Panderbear, who has a nose for hypocrisy and pandering, is beginning to suspect that more than a few of these more-patriotic-and-constitution-loving-than-thou types haven't actually read The Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution, other than the Second Amendment of course. If so, their constant refrain about returning to the gilded-age of adherence and reverence for the Constitution rings hollow indeed, not to mention being egregiously hypocritical. Cartoon versions of the founding fathers and the Constitution, notwithstanding, Panderbear thinks Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and their peers had a greater grasp on economic and political reality than today's conservatives.

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