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“In this connection, mention must be made of the burden of taxation. I mean the burden on the king. One has to decide some very tricky things. How much a chap’s income should one take, morally speaking? Of course one’s first inclination is to take it all and be done with it. But studies have shown that if you take every last groat—and I’m not saying it isn’t a neat solution and that the individual’s not grateful, more or less, for not having to fill out all those tedious forms—you deincentivize him. He stacks arms, to use a military figure, and you lose in the long run. The amount of taxation you can get away with must be nicely judged.
“Not entirely irrelevant in this context is the problem of ermine. Do you know how dear ermine is? One poor devil’s taxes for a whole year will hardly buy one ermine tail, and one rich devil’s taxes for a whole year won’t get you a fully trimmed robe. I wonder that one sees ermine at all nowadays. Yet if you appear in public on a state occasion with nutria or something trimming your robe, they say that you’re skimping on the pomp, the public’s bought-and-paid-for pomp. Well, enough about ermine. It’s crossed my mind to start up a flock or whatever it is of my own, but one can’t do everything, and I’ve never got around to it.
“Next, one must ensure that the population is properly intoxicated,” said Arthur. “Anciently, the cry was Mead for my men! Nowadays it’s more a matter of seeing to it that there are sufficient licensed premises and that such are adequately supplied by the breweries, that the movement of grain and hops to these from the farmers is unimpeded, and that the flow of revenues to the crown from each of the points at which we take our little nip is not lost to us through inspectatorial ineptitude. I never touch the stuff myself, except perhaps in the heat of battle, when a hogshead of brandy might be broached under especially trying circumstances, but your average walking-about citizen becomes extremely churlish when denied his booze, and it’s a thing the ruler does well to keep in view.”
--
pp. 83–84

 

Donald Barthelme

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In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation.

 

Ibn Khaldun

 

I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment...it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a f**king coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, It's a f**king paltry honour.

 

Keith Richards

 

I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment... it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a f**king coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a f**king paltry honour.'

 

Mick Jagger

 

He who possesses liberty otherwise than as an aspiration possesses it soulless, dead. One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands still in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by so doing that he has just lost it. Now this very contentedness in the possession of a dead liberty is characteristic of the so-called State, and, as I have said, it is not a good characteristic. No doubt the franchise, self-taxation, etc., are benefits — but to whom? To the citizen, not to the individual. Now, reason does not imperatively demand that the individual should be a citizen. Far from it. The State is the curse of the individual. With what is Prussia's political strength bought? With the absorption of the individual in the political and geographical idea. The waiter is the best soldier. And on the other hand, take the Jewish people, the aristocracy of the human race — how is it they have kept their place apart, their poetical halo, amid surroundings of coarse cruelty? By having no State to burden them. Had they remained in Palestine, they would long ago have lost their individuality in the process of their State's construction, like all other nations. Away with the State! I will take part in that revolution. Undermine the whole conception of a State, declare free choice and spiritual kinship to be the only all-important conditions of any union, and you will have the commencement of a liberty that is worth something. Changes in forms of government are pettifogging affairs — a degree less or a degree more, mere foolishness. The State has its root in time, and will ripe and rot in time. Greater things than it will fall — religion, for example. Neither moral conceptions nor art-forms have an eternity before them. How much are we really in duty bound to pin our faith to? Who will guarantee me that on Jupiter two and two do not make five ?

 

Henrik Ibsen

 

What Senator McCain has lately been suggesting is that somehow I'm going to take money from people making over $250,000, and give it to people who "pay no taxes". What he's confusing is the fact that even if you don't pay income tax, there are a lot of people who don't pay income tax, but you're still paying a whole lot of other taxes. You're paying payroll tax, which is a huge burden on a lot of middle-income families. You're paying sales taxes. You're paying property taxes. There are a whole host of taxes that you're paying. So when we provide an offset to the waitress or the janitor, these folks are working. This isn't some giveaway to people who are on welfare. This is giving help to people who are working hard every day.

 

Barack Obama