We are having a bit of fun with the title of this podcast because it poses a trick question? You see... if Mr. Biden was president in 1821... aside from the fact that there was no "Democratic" political party then, he would have another issue on his hand: there were no corporate or income taxes back then either. 

And no! As much as our current political skirmishes suggest, it wasn't a Democratic US President that ushered in the income tax. It was a Republican president - Honest Abe! And later, it was during another Republican President's term that the income tax became permanent - William Taft. The irony of it is that the poor masses and the progressive middle class pushed for the income tax to get the rich to pay their fair share. Now, the poor and the middle American families seem to shoulder most of the income tax burden. 

So this begs the following question: how did the federal government pay for itself all these years before the income tax? How and why did it grow so large, needing ever more income to pay for its many programs? 

So that we better understand our present, we spoke with Mr. David Thomson, an assistant professor of American history at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut (link to the academic homepage: https://www.sacredheart.edu/phonebook/david-thomson.php). In his research, Professor Thomson focuses on the Civil War period, including the financing of that war through the sale of government bonds. He recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and has won many awards and honors. He is also a contributor to prominent publications, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe magazine. See more information on his website: http://davidkthomson.com/. Professor Thomson has an upcoming book titled Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union. His book will be published in the Spring of 2022 with the University of North Carolina Press.

Tune in to ThePeel.news podcast as Professor Thomson takes us from our very beginning - no taxation without representation - through Shays' Rebellion, the US Constitution, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, the Civil War, great depressions before the GREAT DEPRESSION, the Gilded Age, the Sixteenth Amendment, World War I, the Roaring '20s, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and World War II. 

Image attribution:

The chart title "Federal Revenue by type" is by Wikideas1, from this source, and provided under CC BY-SA 4.0 license in Wikipedia. The sides and top margins of the chart were cropped for better fitting. Some descriptions & titles were superimposed on the chart for better reading. The chart was turned sideways for better fit into the frame. 

🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/