Useless employees, large and small Part 9

So then, the war was over, the Treaty of Paris was a done deal, and George Washington was back in Mount Vernon. But there was still a lot to be done.
Why, you ask? Well, silly, it was because nobody was at work finding a way to tax every result of every synaptic operation occurring in the heads of every person in the several states, of course. What are you, some kind of tax rebel?
And it is that one thing, my friends, which you will ever and always find as the unquestioned assumption on the part of those who rule, from legitimate representatives with genuinely high ideals to murdering despots that get a kick out of feeding their enemies to brush chippers: people must be taxed in order to pay for the necessary means to rule them. And implicit in the means to rule are the means to control, manipulate, punish, socially engineer, harass, and threaten with unanswerable deadly force the general population - and maybe fix the potholes.

Mr. Benjamin Franklin told us “ Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” I don’t know if Mr. Franklin realized that the latter could only be escaped by the former or that the former is often the result of the latter.
Why in the world he and a group of otherwise intelligent men chose to put the boot of taxation on the throat of their fellow countrymen the way they did way back in 1787 is something I will never understand…

1777 was winding down and the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union had been adopted. Article 2 of said document reads as follows:

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Personally, I think is the best part of the whole document, and it reflects the real attitudes of the people of the several states at the time. While they had all been subject to the authority of the Crown throughout their existence, the colonies were separate entities, and until now, the idea of creating a union had never occurred to any of them. Folks in Virginia might have thought that the people of, say, Massachusetts were okay (George Washington not being among them), but as the old saying goes, “Good fences make good neighbors.” A union was not something to be entered into lightly, because it meant giving up some degree of autonomy, and that is something free people do with great reluctance. Ask any guy who's 4 drinks into his stag party…

It was this natural guardedness that proved to be one of the thornier issues to face the Founders. It is a common trait in humanity: once we get done fighting a common enemy, we usually start fighting each other. Oddly, though, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that the idea of remaining independent nations ever crossed the minds of the movers and shakers of the day. The closest thing I’ve found is the desire on the part of the Anti-Federalists to copy the type of government that Switzerland had had in place for about 700 years by the time all this was going on, and is still in place there today with a few modifications. (Not bad; I suppose if I ever start my own country, I might have to take a closer look at that outfit…) Certainly, the Prohibitory Act that created these 13 nations had no magic spell that created a union out of thin air. It was the thinking of the leaders of the day that put forth the idea of a joining together for the common benefit.
The other part I like about the Articles was its virtual impotence in forcing the states to pay taxes. And from 1783 to 1788, the states paid very little. The result was a wealthy population, stable politics, and poor politicians. That last part was no big deal to these guys; they actually worked for a living back then. Besides, Article V of document said they couldn’t get paid for being a delegate anyway. What a concept!
But before it sneaks away, let me grab that little fact by the neck that I just mentioned a bit ago and hold it up so you can get a good look at it. Article VIII says:
All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.

If you like, read it again and see if you get the idea. If not, here it is: the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union did not give the United States government the power to tax individuals. It could only require – actually, in reality, beg for – taxes from the States. The boys in Congress couldn’t tax a farmer in Virginia; they directed the Virginia legislature to tax him, with the caveat that the Feds could determine the actual value of the land and property in the states. (So what’s a little fascism among friends, hunh?)
At this juncture, I want to bring a couple of thoughts together so that we can get back to the point of this whole exercise and wrap it up in the next installment.
1. When anything happened of political import back then, it was carried out by delegates representing their entire state as a single entity.
2. The sates ceded an absolute minimum of sovereignty to the United States government, giving up only as much as necessary to accomplish the goals of common defense and general welfare.
3. As might be expected, given the previous two points, nothing in the initial formation of the United States of America indicated that the Founders ever envisioned or even thought of the idea of the citizens of the several states having any direct relationship with the government of the United States. That came much later, and has been perpetrated and perpetuated by an increasingly treasonous federal legislature.

I promise to do my best to wrap this up next time with some comments, and actually talk about what those guys did in Philly.