Side-Stepping the
Sheriff
I’m going to put into Victory Loan certificates every dollar
I can rake and scrape together, said a stranger on the train the other day.
Why? we asked; because it is always interesting to know how
men’s minds work on big propositions.
Well, said he, they are tax-free and that by itself makes
them worth a full three percent to me. My taxes last year all put together were
exactly three percent of the property I had on the tax books. I’ll get at least
four percent on those certificates and I’ll save three percent in taxes. That
makes a clear 7 percent, and I’m not getting much more than a clear 5 percent
on anything I’ve got invested now. I’ll be two percent ahead of the game. See?
Besides—he went on to say—this new tax law in North Carolina
is going to put my property on the tax books at its full value, and I don’t
want to tell any lies about it like I’ve been doing all my life.
Not much sentiment in this fore-handed chap, but plenty of
shrewd business sense. He represents just about one-tenth of the people of
every community the world around—as we seem to have learned in fairly definite
way of late years.
The other nine-tenths of us are producers and spenders or
wasters of what we produce day by day down to the last penny—or worse. We are
patriotic enough but our minds are war-weary and both sense and sentiment in us
are collapsed these days like a child’s toy balloon, or apparently so. We are
even silly enough to think that the costs of war stopped when the armistice was
signed. And so on and on.
Our prediction is that the Victory Loan will be taken in the
main by the rich and well-to-do, as a shrewd business proposition. The success
of the Victory Loan depends, we fear, on the hard horse-sense of a very small
group in every community.
People who are laying up treasure on earth beyond the reach
of tax gatherers will see the point; no doubt about that.
They can own Liberty Bonds, War Stamps and Victory
Certificates free of all taxes up to $180,000 each.
The chances are they will never have another chance in all
their lives to side-step the sheriff.
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