Statement by Jule R. Herbert Jr., President of the National Taxpayers Legal Fund (in 1984, that is)

Found on the internet: 1984 testimony of yours truly before a Senate Finance subcommittee on a "taxpayer bill of rights" proposal -- which passed in some form, as I recall. But the important point was concerning the tax system itself:

"Of course, changing a few procedural rules about the tax collection process is just a beginning. For example, it is no longer possible to deny that the problems of the U.S. economy over the last several decades were caused in substantial part by the tax system. The fact that this system has a pervasive institutional bias against saving, capital formation, work incentives, and relative price coordination seems to be generally recognized. Certainly the positive reforms which were passed in 1981 (especially tax rate indexing and the reduction of the marginal rates) could not have passed in the intellectual climate of just a few years earlier. That more was not done in 1981 was not because the advantages of easing the constraints imposed by the tax system on the market economy were not seen by many, but because there has been little progress in linking tax reform to necessary reforms of government spending.

I would argue that the cost of runaway government spending is much greater than the amount of resources which are thus taxed, borrowed, or taken from the American people through the insidious process of inflation. Its growing drain on the ability of government to conduct itself in a rational manner not only presents an almost insurmountable obstacle to needed tax reform, but in addition entails negative "nonfiscal" effects on the social structure, damaging thereby the market economy and, indeed, the very prospects for a stable political order.

The whole ethos which provides the justification for work, saving, voluntary exchange, and property rights is undermined as government spending expands without apparent constraint. If groups can simply "vote" themselves increasingly larger shares of the community's wealth, then the effectiveness of free-market institutions for the production of wealth becomes problematical."

This is great stuff, back when I was profound and very nuanced.