Tax the Unmarried, Pay for Social Security
From the pages of the Tacoma Times, Sept. 30, 1910. In September of 1910, officials from the Finance Ministry in Paris were scrambling to come up with ways to pay for the French Old Age Pensions bill, a compulsary insurance plan similar to social security. The Minister of Finance, M. Cochery, asked clerks to come up with ideas and was bombarded with suggestions, some ideas were “decidedly original” and some that were “highly impracticle.” Among the proposed subjects of taxation: “Bachelors and old maids;…