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Greg Nance's avatar

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Jim Davidson's avatar

Historical note: It is true we kept all of our pay before 1913. We also kept all of it up until early 1942. Suddenly, because FDR lied and hid the truth from nearly everyone, Japanese fleets that had *not* maintained radio silence and were in fact tracked across the ocean (tracking worksheets declassified in the 1990s) the USA was at war. A very smart fellow named Milton Friedman invented "income tax withholding" and it was pushed through congress as an emergency war measure. They called it the "victory tax" and by other names. Suddenly for the first time your pay was reduced by what the system (and your employer) calculated was your likely income tax obligation. And your employer only had to send it in every quarter instead of every time they paid you, so they made interest on your withheld earnings (binding the mouths of the kine that tread the grain) and were net beneficiaries of the sting. So when you look at ol' Uncle Miltie's public broadcasting documentaries "Free to Choose" and you wonder to yourself, "How did this interesting free market stuff ever get on public television?" Well, now ya know. He was a fink.

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