I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.
Interpretation
Thomas Jefferson argues that taxing wine is not just a luxury tax but one that affects public health.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the importance of understanding the broader implications of taxation, especially on items like wine. He critiques the perception that such taxes are simply levies on luxury consumption, instead framing them as detrimental to the health and well-being of citizens, revealing a deeper responsibility of governance and economic policy concerning public health.
In practice
During a public health seminar, this quote could illustrate the connection between taxation and health outcomes.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Even in fiction, I feel rigorous honesty applies. It doesn't apply to facts; it applies to what I think of as not telling emotional lies, which is a funny business.
There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires.
When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
We are all victims of the violence that animals suffer... their liberation is also our liberation.
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