NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- In his turn-of-the-20th-century book, The Life of Reason, philosopher George Santayana wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The 1905 quotation holds true more than a century later.
This, naturally, begs the question of what it is to be remembered so it is not repeated?
Doug Bently, who does blood and urinalysis testing at the Medical Arts Lab in New Smyrna Beach, answered: “I think we should learn to stay out of foreign wars."
I asked the same question of Donna Paulison, an admissions specialist at Bert Fish Medical Center, who replied: "We need to understand the effect of taxes."
She's right on target and so is Bently. Foreign wars have proven to be the ruination of countries for centuries. Though not ruination, America didn't need to involve itself in World War I. Or Vietnam for that matter.
What Paulison said strikes a bigger chord.
The one crucial fact we should glean from history is that every country given enough time will tax and spend itself into a state of paralysis. The Romans taxed their farmers off the land before the barbarians took over. The Spanish, Dutch And French empires all floundered on taxes and spending.
There is a distinct pattern. While taxes and spending are kept low and sustainable, a country grows and prospers. However, politicians are never satisfied with the amount of revenue they have generated from taxes.
Naturally, this doesn’t satisfy them so they raise taxes again and again. Eventually, the economy becomes crippled and the citizens are prisoners of the tax system. There are notable exceptions in which countries have bucked the trend and have prospered beyond belief. The “Asian Tigers” -- Japan, Hong Con, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan -- have all produced miracles of growth simply by sticking to low levels of taxation and low levels of everything else governmental.
Inside our country, it can be seen by those willing to see that high-tax states such as California, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, are losing out to low tax states like Colorado, Florida and Texas.
Sadly, few leaders in the states that are losing ground are willing and able to recognize the problems and do something about them. Apparently, many politicians would rather die than curtail taxes and spending.
On a local level, the standard of living in Volusia County is lower than in many surrounding counties. Our brilliant leaders come up with “great ideas’ such as blue ribbon search committees to get new business here and hair-brained schemes to extend the Ocean Center in Daytona to lure conventions here.
Let me propose a radical “new plan” that they haven’t tried before: Slash government, slash spending, slash regulations and see what happens.
The lesson from thousands of years of history is undeniable. Low taxes lead to freedom, prosperity, and well being of society. High taxes lead to a lack of freedom, economic paralysis and misery for everyone, rich, poor and somewhere in between. The question is will anyone pay attention?