yeah, but in 1927 we had no armed forces to speak of, no social safety net or welfare system, a much smaller and simpler infrastructure and economy to administer and regulate, and most people were (by today's standards) dirt poor, even though pre-depression america was considered very prosperous. there was a huge exploited subsistence laboring class of Negroes and immigrants (which we are doing everything we can to rebuild!), a predominantly tenant agricultural population, the middle class was proportionately much smaller, and the rich lived in obscene extravagance. holmes was right, civilization has a price. it also has its benefits.

the only thing that hasn't changed since holmes' time was that those who already had the benefits of civilization didn't give a damn about those who didn't. i'm sure the critics of the 1927 tax laws probably used the same arguments that today's do, and for the exact same reason: they already lived well, why should they pay any more?