I am currently reading Objective Communication, which is based on a lecture series by Dr. Leonard Peikoff about learning to think and communicate clearly.  It is quite dense in many ways so I am breaking it up with other books.  Among those other books, I just started in on Taxation: The People’s Business by Andrew Mellon, arguably one of the best Treasury Secretaries (1921 to 1932) the United States has had.  He was among the first to advocate reducing income tax rates in order to increase revenue to the government.

I am just starting the first chapter, which deals with his views on what the fundamental principles of a tax system should be, and I quickly came to this quote which I think could easily have been addressed to President Obama and other statist politicians of both parties today.

I have never viewed taxation as a means of rewarding one class of taxpayers or punishing another.  If such a point of view ever controls our public policy, the traditions of freedom, justice and equality of opportunity, which are the distinguishing characteristics of our American civilization, will have disappeared and in their place we shall have class legislation with all its attendant evils.  The man who seeks to perpetuate prejudice and class hatred is doing America an ill service.  In attempting to promote or to defeat legislation by arraying one class of taxpayers against another, he shows a complete misconception of those principles of equality on which the country was founded. [emphasis mine]