Alarmists Are Always Right
March, 1977
If the income tax were to pass, Charles Hughes warned in 1910, "the Federal tax rate might get as high as ten percent."That was alarmism at the time. Today it is a joke. But it is a joke worth pondering as a fine illustration of an unrecognized political truth: Alarmists are always right.If anyone had the leisure to read all the footnotes of American history, he would discover that before almost any far-reaching social development--the eruption of a war, the passage of a major law or a...
