The distribution of the government’s claim is the next part of the definition. What is a “fair share?” I believe that the requirements of justice here are perfectly clear: _government has a right to claim an equal percentage of each man’s wealth, and no more_. Property taxes are typically levied on this basis. Excise and sales taxes are based on the same principle--though the tax is levied on a transaction rather than on property. _The principle is equally valid with regard to incomes, inheritances and gifts._ The idea that a man who makes $100,000 a year should be forced to contribute ninety per cent of his income to the cost of government, while the man who makes $10,000 is made to pay twenty per cent is repugnant to my notions of justice. I do not believe in punishing success. To put it more broadly, I believe it is contrary to the natural right to property to which we have just alluded--and is therefore immoral--to deny to the man whose labor has produced more abundant fruit than that of his neighbor the opportunity of enjoying the abundance he has created. As for the claim that the government _needs_ the graduated tax for revenue purposes, the facts are to the contrary. The total revenue collected from income taxes beyond the twenty per cent level amounts to less than $5 billion--less than the federal government now spends on the one item of agriculture. The graduated tax is a _confiscatory_ tax. Its effect, and to a large extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level. Many of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that their purpose is to redistribute the nation’s wealth. Their aim is an egalitarian society--an objective that does violence both to the charter of the Republic and the laws of Nature. We are all equal in the eyes of God but we are equal _in no other respect_. Artificial devices for enforcing equality among unequal men must be rejected if we would restore that charter and honor those laws. One problem with regard to taxes, then, is to enforce justice--to abolish the graduated features of our tax laws; and the sooner we get at the job, the better. The other, and the one that has the greatest impact on our daily lives, is to reduce the volume of taxes. And this takes us to the question of government spending. While there is something to be said for the proposition that spending will never be reduced so long as there is money in the federal treasury, I believe that as a practical matter spending cuts must come before tax cuts. If we reduce taxes before firm, principled decisions are made about expenditures, we will court deficit spending and the inflationary effects that invariably follow. It is in the area of spending that the Republican Party’s performance, in its seven years of power, has been most disappointing.