we become rulers, our autocratic government, for the sake of self-defense, will avoid burdening the people with heavy taxes, and it will not forget the rôle it has to play, namely, that of Father and Protector. But as government organization is costly, it is necessary to raise the means for its maintenance. Consequently, we must carefully work out the plan of a fair distribution of taxation.
In our government the sovereign will have the legal fiction of owning everything in his kingdom (which is easily put into practice), and can resort to legal confiscation of all money in order to regulate its circulation throughout the country. Consequently, the best method of taxation is the levying of a progressive tax on property. Taxes will thus be paid without difficulty or ruin in respective proportion to the amount of property owned. The rich must realize that it is their duty to give a part of their surplus wealth for the benefit of the country as a whole, because the government guarantees inviolability of the remaining part of their property and the right of honest gain. I say honest because the control of property will prevent legal theft.
This social reform must come from above, for the time is ripe and it is becoming necessary as a guarantee of peace.
The tax on the poor is the seed of revolution, and it acts detrimentally to the government, which loses the great in its pursuit of the little. Moreover, the taxation of capital will lessen the increase of wealth in private hands, in which at present we have concentrated it as a counterweight to the governmental power of the Goys, namely, to the state treasury.
Progressive taxation, assessed according to the amount of capital, will produce a much greater revenue than the present system of taxing every one at an equal rate, which is useful to us now only as a means of exciting revolt and discontent among the Goys. The power