Gold and Taxes on Foundations of Freedom Thursday

Child

President, thomas Jefferson said I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show. We are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can learn more about us at our website, wallbuilders.com, and you can listen to archives of the program at wallbuilders.show. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton, America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of Wal Builders.

And before we jump into our Foundations of Freedom, Thursday regular programming I want to invite you to join all three of us at the Patriot Academy campus for the Constitutional Defense course. Now, you can do that course any time of the year, almost every week, but we're going to all three be there for July 4th, for Independence Day. We're going to have some fireworks. It's going to be phenomenal. We're going to have a great time of fellowship throughout the weekend. If you would like to be a part of that course, come. Learn handgun defense and constitutional intellectual ammunition if you will. In other words, learn how to defend the Constitution intellectually while also learning how to defend yourself and your family in the moment. Should the wolf show up at your door. I pray that the wolf does not show up. But Proverbs 27:12 says that a wise person foresees danger and takes precaution. A fool walks blindly on and suffers the consequences. If you'd like to join us for that class or any of our other ones, be sure and check it out at patriotacademy.com. When you get to that main website, look for Constitutional Defense. So it's patriotacademy.com and then look for Constitutional Defense and it'll pull up all the dates where you can sign up for the class. And if you want to see some fireworks and fire off a few of your own on the front line there and really learn some good skills from the best instructors on the planet and get to hang out with David and Tim and me, then come on July 4th and here we go.

David and Tim it's a grab bag of questions from the audience. They sent in quite a few, so we're going to get to as many as we can. Two of them very similar Paul asked about the history of property taxes and then I think I say this Malag Malag McNott maybe it's Malague McNaught from Oregon says I love listening to your show. I'm a proud Oregonian. Did I say that right, guys? And a granddaughter of former Congressman Bob Smith one of the good ones. I am one of the few conservative Oregonians you talk about, but we are still here and your show gives me hope that we can make our state better.

Okay, questions about taxes. But, by the way, Mrs McNaught, I'll be at your homeschool convention in just a few weeks I think it's the end of June or something like that so I'm coming to the great state of Oregon and looking forward to being out there for a few days. Anyway, the question is I wanted to know what our founding fathers intended the tax system to be. I feel like taxes are very confusing and hard to understand, so I wanted to know if that's how they have always been or if that's something our government has introduced more recently. Thank you for your time and thank you again for all you guys do to help our country. So, guys, just kind of putting those two together one generally about what the founders intended for, how our taxes should work, and then one about property taxes specifically. 

David Barton

Do you guys even remember Bob Smith? That's been like late 90s, right? Yeah, he goes back a ways. He was Pro-life champ though, wasn't. He Is what I remember.

Conservative and pro-life champ. Really good guy. Really good before Oregon became so 98% woke or whatever. I mean back in the days Oregon was a conservative Republican state in many areas and so it's moved away from that. But yeah, Bob Smith was a good warrior back when we needed good warriors really good guy.

Rick Green

So and wasn't it kind of I mean, Oregon was always and still has some, some pretty rural areas that are are conservative and typically rural states are conservative. But then Portland got big and and, uh, you know, got very, very liberal and I don't know if that was Seattle moving down to Portland or what happened. But oh, the beautiful coast and all of it.

The left destroys all the good places 

Tim Barton

well, in Oregon too, guys, is the place where people were petitioning to be able to separate the state, divided into because east Oregon was so much, uh, more conservative right, felt so different than what was going on in west Oregon. And it's not that there's not great people, uh, in West Oregon as well, they're just significantly outnumbered. And Eastern Oregon, uh, absolutely much more conservative population, um, which doesn't really answer any of the questions we're being asked today, but that is some of the back but we're having fun.

David Barton

So it is two States too, because when you're on the West coast it really is coastal. But when you're on the East side of Oregon, you're in farming country, you're in. You're on the west coast, it really is coastal. But when you're on the east side of Oregon, you're in farming country, you're in, you're in just beautiful agricultural country, same on the on the east side of Washington state. I mean that's why so many of those counties are trying to jump over and join Idaho and that Greater Idaho Movement. Uh, it's like two states, but nearly, with the exception of the really blue cities, nearly everything's two states. I mean Illinois is really conservative except for Chicago and, and New York is basically conservative except for New York City and, and those are the big cities that drive us. So Oregon, Oregon's got a lot of great people in it. They're just kind of outnumbered by the, by the crazies, at this point.

But yeah, very rare to find a farming area that's not conservative right

Rick Green

 I thought about you today, David, I was. I to my oldest son, trey, about just how ridiculous the labor laws are now and how the Bible says six days, shout thou work. And I said, like David Barton says, you're supposed to work, from can't see to can't see. So anyway, that's a farming community. They get that right. So they have that work ethic and responsibility.

David Barton

So they tend to be obviously, obviously more conservative in their politics, you know we've gotten hit it a couple of times in the last decade, but that was one of the things that Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson and other founders talked about the huge differences between those who live in the cities and those who live in the country, the moral differences, the work habits, the morality. There was just such a difference even back then. So it's kind of you know. I think it was Benjamin Rush who quoted one of the famous poets. He said that God made the country and man made the cities. And ever since the Tower of Babel those things haven't worked out real good. So it goes back a long way.

Tim Barton

That's right, so speaking of taxes it's a great segue guys. Tim, you're so much better at keeping us on track.

Rick Green

You know, we just kind of go down these little rabbit trails and uh, okay, so back to the history of taxes 

Tim Barton

like hey, rick's back with us now and you know the distraction of earlier, uh, this week is like let's just talk about other things.

But no, there's an important question about taxes, because taxes are crazy right now yeah yeah you know, even in the midst of politics, so often you will hear different politicians talk about a different kind of tax policy. And we're only going to penalize certain kinds of people with taxes. Right, we're only going to do it's a capital gain, Then it's only going to go on the really wealthy people. We're only going to tax the rich or it would never impact the middle class, it would never impact the lower level, it would never impact the middle class, it would never impact the lower level.

And so I mean this is a really important conversation navigating this tax issue, because if more people I mean not to derail us more on this, but even when you hear schools saying, hey, we need money and so we're encouraging you to vote for this $300 million bond that we can build new schools and we need to pay our teachers better and people are like, hey, it's just a bond. What's the big deal? Not knowing, Well, a bond is a tax you're voting on yourself, right? Most Americans just don't seem to understand a lot of the tax laws or even the tax language and lingo and what politicians will often do in tax conversation. So it really is an important topic to dive into.

David Barton

Yeah, so hitting that if you go. Property tax is what we're asked about, but we're going to get into other taxes as well, because property taxes have always been part of kind of a group of taxes. But they really go back to the feudal times when you had the kings and the queens and everything else, and so all over Europe and England, everywhere else, all the land belonged to the king. He would let you use it. So what he would do is he would tax the land and if you're a lord, if you're a noble, if you're a peasant, whatever, and you're on his land, he's taxing you for using his land, taxing you for using his land. And as he taxes you for using his land, if you produce on that land, you also get taxed on the production on that land. So the land itself and what you produce and that's what brought money into the king's coffers back in the day. So now you can go back a lot earlier, those taxes way back in the Bible, thousands of years before the medieval times. You're talking about taxes at the time of Jesus, et cetera. But property tax really kind of goes back for us in the Western culture to the medieval times and there were really five basic kind of taxes that they use. One's the one that originally was in the constitution, that's a capitation tax, and a capitation tax means a tax per capita, per person, per head. Everybody's treated exactly the same. At that point in time it was the 16th Amendment in, was it 1913, that said no, we don't want capitation taxes, we want progressive taxes. We want to be able to treat different people differently. So instead of taking your taxes and splitting it up among all people, you say, hey, you pay more than this person pays, this person's not going to pay any, you're going to pay 12 times as much or whatever. So you're no longer treating people all the same. So capitation taxes, property taxes, then you have. And by the way, with property taxes, this was also a thing where that it was your property, not just the land you owned. But at the time of John Adams in 1797, he proposed a window tax that you get taxed on the number of windows in your houses. So if you had more and more windows than others, that suggested your house was bigger, so we'll tax you more. There were for a time, in the 1800s, there were closet taxes. If you had a closet, you got taxed on that, because that indicates you're fairly wealthy. You have a closet. Most people had shift robes or something standing in the corner. But if you've built a room for a closet and then they got into taxing by the rooms how many rooms do you have in your house? The more rooms you must be wealthier, we'll tax you more. So that was part of property taxes too. But then they have enumerated taxes where that you have.

What do you want to say? You tax certain things. Items you tax items on their value. Then there are faculty taxes, and that's on the capacity you have to earn more. So if you're a healthy, strong person, you're going to get taxed more than a weak, older or infirm person. Your faculties you have more faculties that you can use to make money. There's that kind of tax. And then the last two were on tariffs.

Tim Barton

I just want to stop on that one for a second because I feel like that's waiting for jokes. Oh it is, and you guys didn't jump in, so I just let it go. I let it go, but I was thinking based on the faculties and your abilities and your strengths. I'm not going to. You know, I wouldn't call anybody out. I don't want to be the one getting embarrassed on this. I just thought that you know that could be interesting.

Rick Green

I thought you were going to call out a particular region of the country, but thankfully we're not going to do that.

Tim Barton

Well, I was just thinking right, If you're listening with your friend and you're like, hey, bro, don't worry, you would never be taxed, right?

David Barton

You would have been safe out of that for sure. And then you got the tariffs and the excises. By the way you get tariffs and excises, Rick, do you remember the difference between those from legislative days?

Rick Green

Oh, let me think I'm totally off the top of my head here. Tariff would be if it's crossing the border from another country, coming in from another country 

David Barton

Good job. 

Rick Green

But excise? What was it Was that, if it was almost, I wouldn't call it a property tax, but almost like an inventory, you're taxing something that's sitting, it's not accumulating, almost like a dock.

David Barton

Well, not quite. I guess it could be docks if you're in the 1920s, but it's really a consumption tax and that's what you-. Ah, oh, it's more of a sales tax then, yeah, liquor marijuana, things that you consume, and so you put in the tobacco excise taxes on tobaccos A lot of the consumption type of taxes on those things.

Rick Green

Okay, so it doesn't mean like was leaving the state, or leaving Doesn't have anything to do with exiting. I'm reading like the wrong.

I'm terrible at grammar people, but you got the imports right.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Okay, got it One for two.

Tim was quiet.

David Barton

 So, back to the founding fathers' days, the Southern guys did not like property taxes because they've got a whole lot more property than you do in Boston, and so property taxes ended up being kind of unfair for some people in the eyes of those who had the land. The property owners said hey, we got land, why are we paying so much more than those who have a tiny little house? But they're wealthier than we are, whatever. So property taxes were really seen as kind of targeting a group of people more than anything else. So what you had was, by the time you get to the admission of Tennessee in 1796, you have 15 states and seven of them had gotten away from property taxes and gone uniform capitation taxes. We're treating everybody the same. We're going to look at every individual. And so now what they did was they did tax some property, because 12 of the 15 states tax you on your livestock. So that's some of your property. That's not land taxes, that's your cattle and other possessions. So what you get is, by the time you get to the territorial expansion, when you start seeing Illinois become a state and you start seeing Missouri become a state, they start saying there's a better set of taxes than just having property taxes. And so they went to what they called a uniformity clause, and so the State Constitution started to require that you have uniform taxation, you treat everybody equally, you treat them by value, not by potential, and so that really kind of started shifting things.

Now what happened is the property taxes were used more for local people or local governments than it was for federal governments. It was a lot of the import taxes were federal taxes. So when you start looking, it's kind of interesting. I found a chart that I kind of think is intriguing. ng If you go to 1902 and you look at property taxes in 1902, 45% of the federal government’s income came from property taxes but 78% of local governments came from property taxes. If you go to something like 20m 30 years later, it's only 15% of the federal government's income comes from property taxes, but 85% of local communities get theirs from property taxes. So property taxes became more of a local way. It's back to the Puritans and the Pilgrims, et cetera, where they would tax you for the support of schools and support of the local things there in the community. So they had various taxes on that. So that's kind of how it got started. There was so many taxes. The government kept growing. They added dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of taxes.

And that's where you get to something that really kind of changed the way things are done, and that's the California tax revolt. That was Prop 13 back in 78. At that point in time I was just thinking about whether politics was important or not two years out of college, so that wasn't a big deal to me, but I do remember the tax revolt. So the tax revolt at that point in time California was taxing for everything and they put a limit on it. They said you can't do property taxes above this certain limit and you can only have a 2% increase in taxes per year. And a bunch of other states jumped on board with that. And so, as they jumped on board with trying to limit the amount of taxes, what they've done is they start placing fees on everything. They start charging you government fees and licensing. You want to be a hairdresser? Not that you need training on that from the state, but the state's going to charge you a license to do that. Or if you're going to be some kind of massage therapist, they're going to charge you a license. So they started charging licensing. And so the effort to reform taxes. All it's done is cause the government to morph into other taxes and find other ways of doing things and other ways to charge you and other ways to add on fees, and it was supposed to kind of stop the inequity of the government going after your properties. But that just hadn't happened yet.

Now we've had a couple of programs here in Texas about property taxes, how bad they are, and our state legislature is trying to get away from that and a lot of states are moving away from property taxes. It doesn't mean your tax rate goes down. Our argument has been if you can tax my property and I don't pay taxes, you'll take my property from me, which means if I don't pay $100 tax on a $1,000 piece of property, the state gets my property. That's not right. So that's where we've had opposition to property taxes is the state should not be able to take your property from you if you can't pay an excise tax or you can't pay the income tax or whatever. That's a different thing. But taking your property is where we've always found it too bad. So that's kind of an overview of, I mean a quick overview. There's obviously dozens of books written about this kind of stuff, but that's a little quick overview of little taxes in America and property tax and where it was, where it is.

Rick Green

And, of course, guys, as we say, biblical, historical, constitutional rights. So biblically, we're not against having tax, right. We know that taxes are necessary for government to operate and Jesus even says render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. And we're supposed to pay our taxes for sure. But there are biblical taxes and not-so-biblical taxes and there are things that actually just work in the real world and actually work well and cause your economy to flourish, and then those things that obviously tear it down and depress the economy. So there's wisdom in doing it the right way by looking at the biblical, historical and constitutional perspective.

So it's great to get that history, that foundation of kind of what they went through, and then that helps us to make better decisions,

David Barton

 Rick, I would add that the easiest way to fix the tax problem is to follow the Constitution, If you get the federal government back to doing only the 17 things it was told to do instead of the $8,444,000 that it tried to fund if you get them back to only funding 17 issues. Your taxes will go through the floor and you'll suddenly find yourself much wealthier than you've ever been in your life, because you get to choose what to do with your money rather than the federal government telling you what programs they're going to spend it on. So just simply getting back to constitutional function of government is one of the easiest things, for tax reform is get the government put back in this box. Right now it's doing all sorts of stuff that's not their business and they're charging us to do it, and we don't even want a lot of what they do, so they're still charging us. That's the easiest way to have tax reform.

Rick Green

Yep, and honestly simple. When you go down that list in the Constitution and folks, if you're wondering about that, be sure and take our class. Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. You can get it right now at wallbuilders.com. We've got to take a break, guys. We've got more questions. See how many we can get to in our second segment today, which will be shorter than this one. Stay with us. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday, which means we're taking your questions. You can send them in to radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wallbuilders.com. Next up is Nicholas and it's about transactional gold. And of course, guys, we've had Kevin Freeman on. We need to get him back. It's probably a lot has happened. I know he and our friend Paul Blair have been getting legislation filed in I think it's 20-something states now where they're making this effort.

But Nicholas asked about it. He said I've heard much about transactional gold and a financial reset. However, if the American dollar does truly reset, wouldn't it be more likely that we revert to a barter system than something like gold or silver? So very hypothetical here, hopefully, guys, I mean anything can happen, right, but uh, if you had a, a major crash I think it's really what Nicholas is asking um, wouldn't we just be trading with each other rather than using gold and silver?

And you know, I don't know how to answer this in terms of a broad historical standard, but I think barter can work, but only to a certain extent, because you got to carry the chickens around with you to trade with somebody. You got to have things. You, of course, I think ammo is the best thing to have to trade, but gold and silver at least becomes a means of trade. That makes it easier if we were to end up there, but we don't have to end up there to be able to use this. That's one reason we had Kevin on to talk about how this is actually just a good way for states to be able to have something that's got good backing.

David Barton

Yeah, and, by the way, transactional gold is not like having gold bullion in a vault. That's not transactional. Transactional means you can take it and spend it and get change for it. You can't walk into a grocery store in the middle of the depression with a gold ingot worth $15,000 and expect to get changed back on a loaf of bread. That's not transactional. So transactional means-. 

Rick Green

Well, David, I would be glad to take your gold and give you a loaf of bread, 

David Barton

yeah for a store owner?

that's transactional, bubba, you bet that's transactional Now for the consumer? No, don't think so. And by the way, there's so many investors saying, hey, you need to diversify. People need to get in the silver and gold in case the economy does fold up and reset. And while that's true, just if you get into transactional stuff, remember it needs to be smaller, not smaller quantities, but smaller denominations. If you will. Wait a minute, is that like saying the Anglicans, that's a smaller denomination, right? No, a smaller denomination, 

Tim Barton

that'd be a large denomination universally.

David Barton

Okay, quite broad. So you need things that if you want to try to get a loaf of bread, you're going to have to have maybe a Canadian silver quarter or something that you can exchange that would be worth something. You're not going to be able to exchange this stuff, so it needs to be transactional and within that, if there's a great reset and you come to barter, it's all going to be about supply and demand. I mean, if I need a cow because I've got a kid that needs milk, I may trade you three acres of land for that cow, and you want the land and I want the cow, but maybe you don't want the land, maybe you'd rather have two wheelbarrows that I've got. And it's all about what you need and what the other person has available and depending on what you're willing to. Everything is then valued by what you have and by what they have. And I've got something that's worthless to me, but you want to have it. Man, I'll trade with you for something I want, and so that's where barter will go eventually is who's got the stuff that people need most and what's transactional.

Now you might take my three acres of land for a cow, but you couldn't get rid of that, three acres probably if you needed a loaf of bread. That's not going to work. So a lot of it is going to be dependent by what the demand is and what the availability is and what you're willing to spend and what you want to have. But I think there's some kind of reset coming. You cannot do what we're doing right now and continue to move in that same direction. You guys call it, but I would say we're going to have a fairly big financial reset of some kind, because we just can't do this forever.

Tim Barton

Well, and there's a lot of people out there predicting some kind of collapse that is coming. And there's a balance as people of faith, because ultimately we know that even though Jesus wins in the end right, we win in the end. Jesus also said that in this world you will have trouble, but be of good share of overcoming the world. So there's this balance that we obviously want to walk in faith. We know Jesus has overcome the world, but we know he told the disciples that, right, they persecute me and no servant is above his master. They're going to persecute you too. And so there is this nuanced balance where some Christians are like, nope, we're just going to keep claiming it and we're not worried about stuff coming. And then there's people on the other side that are like, nope, it's all doom and despair. And I think the reality is that sometimes we spiritualize things that are not necessarily as reflective of a spiritual condition, as sometimes we make them in the sense of.

The Bible talks about the principles of sowing and reaping. This is just consequences for action. If you inflate a balloon too much, eventually it's going to pop, and that's not because God does or doesn't love you, right? It has nothing to do with God's love or promises for you, but it is an economic reality that if you spend more money than you make, if you are printing money and you don't have something to back it up with, eventually that bubble is going to pop and we're in the middle of such inflation that a lot of economists are warning there could be some kind of market collapse.

That is coming, and we are not doomsday preppers necessarily, but we also believe the Bible says a prudent man foresees evil and takes precaution. And we would definitely say it's probably wise to have something that you could barter with, to have some food. If something happens, power goes out, some emergency, you ought to have a couple of weeks, a month or two of food on hand to be able to navigate in the midst of a very uncertain world. But when it comes back to economics or even this transactional goals a lot more to that conversation, Rick, as you mentioned. Maybe we should get our friend Kevin Freeman back on to go a little further with that thought.

Rick Green

Yeah, it'd be great to even just get an update and see how close it is to passing in one of the states, because it'll be exactly like David said. You'll essentially have a credit card that draws on your gold and allows you to spend it pennies at a time, dollars at a time, whatever it is, instead of hauling around gold and silver. And, to David's point, I think it's really important to have things like junk silver and, just like you said, little smaller denominations, just in case. All right, folks, we'll send those questions in radio at wallbuilders.com. That's radio at wallbuilders.com. We'll get to more of those next Thursday. Be sure to tune in tomorrow, because it's Good News Friday and David and Tim have a big stack of good news to get through. We look forward to seeing you then. You've been listening to the WallBuilder Show.