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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: combjelly who wrote (795237)7/15/2014 4:33:12 PM
From: i-node  Read Replies (1) of 1582695
 
>> Partial quote. Per usual.

One can hardly quote the entire body of Jefferson's writing. I think the point is that you and I can both take segments of his writings to justify our positions. However, those I have posted are what you would call being on "all-fours" while yours are only tangentially related.

>> Correct. But Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson didn't consider rentiers to have earned that income.

>> Right. Labor, not rentiers.

I really can't find any evidence that Jefferson differentiated between the "fruits of labor" and "lots of fruits of labor," which is what capital is. I'm not saying he didn't, only that I've never seen anything that suggested it. And he certainly did not believe that government ought to be allowed to confiscate the wealth of a person, e.g., at death, which is or at least becomes capital to successive generations.

At any rate, it is fair to say that the Founders believed a person who earns money, whether by working in the field or working in one's office, ought not to have his earnings taken. They did not provide, in the Constitution, the authority for government to make such a confiscation.

In fact, Jefferson seemed delighted during his presidency with the arrangement under which federal taxes were essentially excise taxes only. I think you're trying really hard to see something that just isn't there.
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