The Dividends of Prohibition 179 
By this argument the Association Against the Pro- 
hibition Amendment is appealing to the pocketbook 
of income taxpayers. Its argument is for the restora- 
tion of a trafhc that is generally acknowledged to be 
parasitic on all productive industry. 
Of course, the argument is the other way around. 
All income is dependent upon the productivity of 
labor and capital. Anything which impairs that pro- 
ductivity will impair the national income. If the 
“loss” in Federal revenues, which the Association 
Against the Prohibition Amendment places at $936,- 
000,000 a year, due to cutting off the former taxes 
on the outlawed traffic, is to be considered at all, it 
should be in connection with the economic gains. 
But this “loss” is, as a matter of fact, not a loss 
in any true sense. It is a primary economic fact that 
removal of a tax, while it is a surrender of revenue to 
the government in a particular direction, is not at all 
a surrender of income of society. To the extent that 
it is a “loss” to the public treasury, it is a gain, to 
the same extent, to those who formerly paid the 
tax. 
A tax comes out of the individual pocket and goes 
into the common pocket of the nation; so it does not 
get us anywhere to talk about the “loss” sustained 
by the government which surrenders a tax or shifts 
the form in which it is applied. This argument is on 
all fours with the ridiculous assumption of “loss” 
recoverable by repealing the prohibition of sales of 
narcotic drugs in placing that tariff under a license