{"id":33819,"date":"2019-09-30T12:36:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T11:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/listenagain.org\/?p=33819"},"modified":"2019-09-30T12:36:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T11:36:53","slug":"a-to-z-of-historical-blunders-episode-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/?p=33819","title":{"rendered":"A to Z of Historical Blunders: Episode 20"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mixcloud.com\/widget\/iframe\/?hide_cover=1&amp;feed=%2Fnearfm%2Fa-to-z-of-historical-blunders-t-is-for-tax%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"120\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The only two certainties in life; taxes and death<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the A to Z of Historical Blunders, the show that reminds us about the dangers of history repeating itself.<\/p>\n<p>Well might we laugh at First Century AD Roman emperor Vaspasian placing a tax on urine, or to be more precise, taxing the buyers of said urine. The tax was lucrative because the ammonia in urine made it an indispensable cleaning agent in laundries for keeping the iconic Roman toga whiter than white. Benjamin Franklin was right in his assessment then that \u201cIn this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.\u201d \u00a0The pain of unfair taxation was felt as keenly in ancient Rome as it was in pre-revolutionary France; in colonial America as in Thatcher\u2019s Britain or post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. But isn\u2019t it interesting that it was so often the essentials of life that were taxed \u2013 salt, candles, fireplaces, windows; or the few simple pleasures of the poor \u2013 tea and sugar?<\/p>\n<p>The article on which this episode is based can be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldfilibuster.com\/the-only-two-certainties-in-life-taxes-and-death.html#\">read here<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Guests this week: Ray Keary and Shane Macken<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only two certainties in life; taxes and death Welcome to the A to Z of Historical Blunders, the show that reminds us about the dangers of history repeating itself. Well might we laugh at First Century AD Roman emperor Vaspasian placing a tax on urine, or to be more precise, taxing the buyers of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10362],"tags":[14028,10363,15914,15911,15916,10370,15917,15912,10494,15910,15915,15913],"class_list":["post-33819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-to-z-of-historical-blunders","tag-benjamin-franklin","tag-berni-dwan","tag-colonial-america","tag-first-century-ad","tag-post-celtic-tiger-ireland","tag-pre-revolutionary-france","tag-ray-keary","tag-roman-emperor-vaspasian","tag-shane-macken","tag-tax","tag-thatchers-britain","tag-unfair-taxation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33823,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33819\/revisions\/33823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/listenagain.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}