The Koch's Proto-Fascist Inspiration (Lammot DuPont 1942 National Assoc. of Manufacturers speech)

[stockholmer]

On September 17, 1942, the resolutions committee of the National Association of Manufacturers met in a secret session at the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, to prepare a program for the December NAM convention. What took place in that closed meeting amounts to a conspiracy against the government, against the people, and against winning the war. The objectives of the NAM, overriding all other considerations, are: more profits, now and after the war, the destruction of the labor movement, and the wiping out of all New Deal progress.

The delegates heard its research expert, Dr. Claude Robinson, report that the public, when asked which group was most guilty of war profiteering, was answering: big business, 49%; government officials, 40%; labor leaders, 11%. To the question as to what was the main concern of the people today, the answers were predominantly: "The winning of the war; next important, unemployment in the postwar period." The NAM delegates, after considerable discussion, then took their stand -- directly opposed to that of the people as reported to them: Thirty-five delegates voted for dealing with war and postwar problems on an equal basis, fifteen for emphasizing "winning the war" while dealing with postwar issues, and only three for "winning the war" as the only problem for 1943.

snip

"When James D. Cunningham, president of Republic Flow Meters Co., urged the NAM 1943 program to stick to one issue, winning the war, because "if we don't win the war, there won't be a postwar," Lammot DuPont, chairman of the board of E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Liberty Leaguer, supporter of native fascist organizations, replied:

"Deal with the government and the rest of the squawkers the way you deal with a buyer in a seller's market! If the buyer wants to buy, he has to meet your price. Nineteen hundred and twenty-nine to 1942 was the buyer's market -- we had to sell on their terms. When the war is over, it will be a buyer's market again. But this is a seller's market. They want what we've got. Good. Make them pay the right price for it. The price isn't unfair or unreasonable. And if they don't like the price, why don't they think it over?"

"The way to view the issue is this: Are there common denominators for winning the war and the peace? If there are, then, we should deal with both in 1943. What are they? We will win the war (a) by reducing taxes on corporations, high income brackets, and increasing taxes on lower incomes; (b) by removing the unions from any power to tell industry how to produce, how to deal with their employers, or anything else; (c) by destroying any and all government agencies that stand in the way of free enterprise."

http://www.american-buddha.com/seldes.factsfascism7.htm

from
FACTS AND FASCISM

by George Seldes, assisted by Helen Seldes, © 1943 by In Fact, Inc.

[starroute]

1. And they were all too successful

From the time the federal income tax was enacted through the thirties, it was largely limited to the top earners. The tax brackets were extended downward only in the course of the war.


http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII

The Department of the Treasury, for instance, was remarkably successful at generating money to pay for the war, including the first general income tax in American history and the famous "war bonds" sold to the public. Beginning in 1940, the government extended the income tax to virtually all Americans and began collecting the tax via the now-familiar method of continuous withholdings from paychecks (rather than lump-sum payments after the fact). The number of Americans required to pay federal taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945.


http://schalkenbach.org/on-line-library/works-by-other-authors/how-the-income-tax-became-a-tax-on-labor/

During the Second World War, the federal government dipped even deeper. Once again, FDR spouted proposals to make the wealthy share the load; he even proposed to limit incomes to $25,000 a year. But once again such moves were largely symbolic. The needs of war finance were massive; and Congress looked towards the middle class. So finally, to pay for a mass war, Roosevelt turned to a mass tax. . . .

The result was a radical shift in the tax burden-downward. The top rate did go to 94% for incomes over $2,000,000. But Congress also cut in half the exemption level for low-income Americans, which meant that families making $600 a year-$6,300 in today’s dollars-were paying federal income taxes for the first time. By 1948 close to ten times as many Americans were paying federal income taxes as a decade earlier.

The logic was disturbing, for Democrats in particular. War finance was not the only exigency driving the new taxes on working people. Equally important was the desire to stop home-front inflation. War production had created a sudden surge of prosperity, but consumer products were in short supply. Too much money chasing too few products-it was a classic recipe for runaway prices. Since there couldn’t be more products, there’d have to be less money; and war bonds could sop up only so much. As a New York Times editorial put it, “taxation must be broad enough and stiff enough to siphon off a large part of this excess purchasing power from every one. It must take back a sizable amount of the great rise in income that has gone to these two groups, the farmer and the wage and salary earners.”

Let those words linger in your mind. They define the agenda behind the wartime tax system that soon became the Postwar norm. Working people had too much money, and the tax system would have to take it away.

[hootinholler]

2. Kick to find later n/t