The citizens need to have much more than the government and it needs to be widely held in a much flatter distribution of wealth. Which is how it was supposed t

The citizens need to have much more than the government and it needs to be widely held in a much flatter distribution of wealth. Which is how it was supposed to start out to begin with. How did things get to be the way they are? Borrowing from Wall Street banks to fund excessive ambitions (such as the Civil War) which could not be paid back in a single generation just led to more of the same. Something about regulatory capture. This isn't the first time the Treasury had less access to cash than the financial manipulators. Guess who has more power in that case? To pay for government extravagance those in power got the bright idea of taxing earned income more so than capital, even though that was unconstitutional: >The origin of the income tax on individuals is generally cited as the passage of the 16th Amendment, passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913. However, its history actually goes back even further. During the Civil War Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 which included a tax on personal incomes to help pay war expenses but the tax was repealed ten years later. However, in 1894 Congress enacted a flat rate Federal income tax, which was ruled unconstitutional the following year by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the population of each state. The 16th amendment, ratified in 1913, removed this objection by allowing the Federal government to tax the income of individuals without regard to the population of each state.[0] Later that same year the Fed reared its ugly head: >The founding of the Fed came in response to the financial panic of 1907, with advocacy from J.P. Morgan >It was created on December 23, 1913 [1] The panic of 1907 was a result of growing inequality to begin with. This all proved to be not enough to satisfy creditors, then in order to devalue the dollars held by the citizens, gold needed to be made illegal to hold and was confiscated in exchange for Federal Reserve Notes in 1933. So overall during a period of nearly 60 years, the massive wealth of the working citizens was systematically transferred to a government which was almost constantly in debt to those who could best afford bonds issued by the Treasury, redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes. Then basically sold for a profit in 1971 by Nixon, et. al. And here we are. [0]https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/april/tax-day https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/april/... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve