Representation and Taxation

The Boston Tea Party continues with valuable lessons even to today. It all started when the British decided that the colonists were not pulling hteir weight and that they should to start paying their fair share of public expenses. Depending on how you look at it, they had a point. Defense of the colonies, from the French and the people who already lived there, had cost a pretty penny and if you were looking at it as investment property in the short haul, then you were definitely not getting your money's worth. If the long view was that in order to benefit from the land you had to retain it, then making the few people who lived there cover the upfront costs was going to be a hard sell. The colonists themselves weren’t opposed to taxation in principle; they were angry that they had no official say in the matter, since they had no seats in the British Parliament. So it brought to the forefront the unfairness of taxation without representation, which is essentially what Washington, DC has today. The fact that we didn't have a vote in what happened to us led us down the path to revolution. It would behoove those who are actively seeking to restrict voting and thereby tax and fail to allow representation to remember our past.