It Does Not Work

clipped from www.forbes.com Benjamin Anderson, penned a diary reporting the negative consequences of government regulation, taxation and prosecution. Lammot Dupont summed it up when he wrote, "Uncertainty rules the tax situation, the labor situation, the monetary situation and practically every legal condition under which business must operate." Cowed by the achievements of his predecessor Mellon, Roosevelt's man at Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., spoke of his administration's half-decade of failures in a private meeting with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939. Morgenthau was pushing high taxes in the name of budget balancing. But mixed in with his tax arguments were protestations of despair: "No, gentleman, we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job."