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WHO PAYS YOUR 7 AXES?

increase of price, which reduces opportunity and lessenssupply, let us inquire if an income tax may not be shiftedby an employer upon labor.

“ The reply will of course be that it cannot, as the wagesof labor are fixed by the market rate, and that an em-ployer of labor will lose his employees the instant heattempts to reduce their wages below the market rate.He cannot, therefore, make his labor pay his income tax.Now, this is true of all occupations in which the rate ofwages is determined by the quantity and quality of work,and in which the number of men engaged is sufficient toestablish a general average of efficiency, and to make amore or less fixed remuneration per unit of work per-formed. In these trades there is a standard of wageswhich an income tax would not injure. It is true of allmechanical trades, of the generality of clerks and sales-men, and of some classes of professional men. But itseems to me to be not true of all unfixed occupations,such as private secretaries, housekeepers, governesses,clergymen, private tutors, etc., etc. What, for example,is the market rate of wages for private secretaries? Theirwages are governed not so much by average efficiency,as by the ability of the employer to pay. An income taxwould lessen this ability.

“ Let us not leave the argument here, but press it home.A natural objection will be that if private secretaries’wages could be reduced, they would be reduced now, andthe employer would not wait for an income tax to reduce