Thomas Paine Quotes
There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.
Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man, Part the Second. J. S. Jordan, 1792.
A tax system should be instituted
There are two reasons that government cannot depend on the rich for tax yield. First, there are very few rich compared to middle class workers. Although the rich person may pay more on the average in taxes, than others, there are not enough to cover all the expenses of a modern government. Second, because the rich make larger policitcal contributions and have lobbyists, they get legislation that exempts them from many taxes or provides loopholes. So even though the wealthy are theoretically supposed to pay a higher rate of taxes, as a practical matter, most wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries or the waiter who will serve them lunch—the Buffet Principle.
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Historian Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
