Modern Economic Problems eBook

Frank Fetter
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 554 pages of information about Modern Economic Problems.

Modern Economic Problems eBook

Frank Fetter
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 554 pages of information about Modern Economic Problems.

At several times the tariff has been raised soon after a crisis when a good occasion was presented by the need of larger revenues as in 1842, 1860, 1875, and 1897.  Business at such times is just at the point of the cycle when prosperity is due.  The higher tariff of 1842 was succeeded by the low tariff of 1846 without any check to business.  The war obscured the ordinary industrial effects of the tariff acts of the sixties.  The increase in the year 1875 was followed by four years of hard times and slow recovery.  The increase of the tariff in 1890 occurred as business was nearing the top of the cycle and was followed by two years of prosperity culminating in the very severe crisis of 1893.  The authors of the tariff of 1897 were peculiarly fortunate in the time of their action, for the country was just fairly recovering from the very severe crisis of 1893 and prosperity was to continue (with brief hesitation in 1900 and 1903) until the severe crisis and panic of 1907.

The advocates of higher rates are, of course, correct in declaring that the great business prosperity of the years 1915 and 1916 resulted from the unexpected demands in foreign trade growing out of the war, and is not to be credited in large measure to the act of 1913.  But reason requires that the same restraint be exercised in crediting to higher protective acts the prosperity which has in some—­not all—­cases, followed their enactment; and requires further that the present act be not held accountable for the next reaction in trade, whenever it may occur, inasmuch as a reaction would be sure to occur no matter what kind of tariff act we might chance to have at the time.]

CHAPTER 16

OBJECTS AND PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION

Sec. 1.  Public finance as a division of economics.  Sec. 2.  The police function.  Sec. 3.  Social and industrial functions.  Sec. 4.  The enlarging sphere of the state.  Sec. 5.  Industrial revenues of governments.  Sec. 6.  Governmental receipts from loans.  Sec. 7.  Nonrevenue character of receipts from loans.  Sec. 8.  Revenues from taxation.  Sec. 9.  Forms of taxation.  Sec.10.  Defective tax “systems.”  Sec.11.  Various standards of justice suggested.  Sec. 12.  Social welfare as the aim.  Sec. 13.  Principles of administration.  Sec. 14.  Shifting and incidence.  Sec. 15.  Taxes as costs.

Sec. 1. #Public finance as a division of economics.# Men live together in politically organized societies which employ public officials as agents to carry on the functions of government.  Every governmental unit, large or small, may be viewed not only as a political body, but as an economic enterprise.  Each has its economic aspects, such as receipts and expenditures, employer and employee, borrowing and lending, etc.  Each political unit is in this sense “an economy.”  The study of the public economy, of the economic aspects of government as distinguished from its political aspects, constitutes the science of public finance, an important division, tho not the whole, of political economy.

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Modern Economic Problems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.