The Cry Wolf Quote Bank chronicles the false predictions and hyperbole by opponents of these laws and protections. While the issues and specific policies change over time, the rhetoric and themes remained the same. You can search the Quote Bank for what opponents said to prevent these laws from passing. Using the drop down menus on the right their statements by issue, by specific law, by who said it and by the core themes they evoke. Elsewhere on the site, you can find articles, studies, and other material that debunks their claims.
[Estates] are valuable only for what they can produce. If seized by the government they can produce nothing, and if such seizures increase in amount beyond a reasonable limit they must prove not only valueless in themselves but must destroy the sources of production which otherwise would continue to finance the government and provide for the people.
Another seriously untoward effect unavoidably inherent in inheritance taxation is that by such taxation a portion of the capital fund of the nation is transferred into the coffers of the Government, and by it used for operating expenses.
To the demagogue and the man of small means, who pays heavy indirect taxes where he thinks pays none, this looks like taking money from the millionaire and ‘giving it back to the people.’ To any economist it looks like eating up he seed corn, because in effect is s exactly that.
Invested in reproductive enterprise this capital pays taxes again and again. Squandered by Government departments it is only spent once.
The business men of this country who have made and saved money should no longer be supervised, criticized, or controlled by men who have neither made nor saved it.
Labor commissions, factory commissions and investigations, commissions on every subject in the Business Directory, have chilled capital; and when capital catches cold, labor freezes to death….Is the main cause of the lack of work hard to seek? Is it not that business has had too much interference from the state…too many everlasting commissions first prying into every man's affairs, and then telling him how to run them?
To my mind this is all wrong….The experience of the past proves conclusively that the best government is the least possible government, that the unfettered initiative of the individual is the force that makes a country great and that this initiative should never be bound...
Notwithstanding all the talk of a probable exodus of manufacturing interests the commission has not found a single case of a manufacturer intending to leave the State because of the enforcement of the factory laws.
I do not believe in legislation so radical that it means an attack on the valuation of real estate or driving out of our state manufacturing concerns or other large business enterprises.
We are of the opinion that if the present recommendations are insisted upon…factories will be driven from the city, labor will be compelled to accompany them, factories, tenements, and small houses will become tenantless with the final result of demoralization in tax collections by the city. What is wanted is evolution and not revolution.