Government on a Neighboring Planet

72:7.1The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is pa­ter­nal­is­tic only in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of old-age pen­sions and in the fos­ter­ing of ge­nius and cre­ative orig­i­nal­ity; the state gov­ern­ments are slightly more con­cerned with the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen, while the lo­cal gov­ern­ments are much more pa­ter­nal­is­tic or so­cial­is­tic. The city (or some sub­di­vi­sion thereof) con­cerns it­self with such mat­ters as health, san­i­ta­tion, build­ing reg­u­la­tions, beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, wa­ter sup­ply, light­ing, heat­ing, recre­ation, mu­sic, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

72:7.2In all in­dus­try first at­ten­tion is paid to health; cer­tain phases of phys­i­cal well-be­ing are re­garded as in­dus­trial and com­mu­nity pre­rog­a­tives, but in­di­vid­ual and fam­ily health prob­lems are mat­ters of per­sonal con­cern only. In med­i­cine, as in all other purely per­sonal mat­ters, it is in­creas­ingly the plan of gov­ern­ment to re­frain from in­ter­fer­ing.

72:7.3Cities have no tax­ing power, nei­ther can they go in debt. They re­ceive per capita al­lowances from the state trea­sury and must sup­ple­ment such rev­enue from the earn­ings of their so­cial­is­tic en­ter­prises and by li­cens­ing var­i­ous com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

72:7.4The rapid-tran­sit fa­cil­i­ties, which make it prac­ti­cal greatly to ex­tend the city bound­aries, are un­der mu­nic­i­pal con­trol. The city fire de­part­ments are sup­ported by the fire-pre­ven­tion and in­sur­ance foun­da­tions, and all build­ings, in city or coun­try, are fire­proof—have been for over sev­enty-five years.

72:7.5There are no mu­nic­i­pally ap­pointed peace of­fi­cers; the po­lice forces are main­tained by the state gov­ern­ments. This de­part­ment is re­cruited al­most en­tirely from the un­mar­ried men be­tween twenty-five and fifty. Most of the states as­sess a rather heavy bach­e­lor tax, which is re­mit­ted to all men join­ing the state po­lice. In the av­er­age state the po­lice force is now only one tenth as large as it was fifty years ago.

72:7.6There is lit­tle or no uni­for­mity among the tax­a­tion schemes of the one hun­dred com­par­a­tively free and sov­er­eign states as eco­nomic and other con­di­tions vary greatly in dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the con­ti­nent. Ev­ery state has ten ba­sic con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions which can­not be mod­i­fied ex­cept by con­sent of the fed­eral su­preme court, and one of these ar­ti­cles pre­vents levy­ing a tax of more than one per cent on the value of any prop­erty in any one year, home­sites, whether in city or coun­try, be­ing ex­empted.

72:7.7The fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not go in debt, and a three-fourths ref­er­en­dum is re­quired be­fore any state can bor­row ex­cept for pur­poses of war. Since the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can­not in­cur debt, in the event of war the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense is em­pow­ered to as­sess the states for money, as well as for men and ma­te­ri­als, as it may be re­quired. But no debt may run for more than twenty-five years.

72:7.8In­come to sup­port the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is de­rived from the fol­low­ing five sources:

72:7.91. Im­port du­ties. All im­ports are sub­ject to a tar­iff de­signed to pro­tect the stan­dard of liv­ing on this con­ti­nent, which is far above that of any other na­tion on the planet. These tar­iffs are set by the high­est in­dus­trial court af­ter both houses of the in­dus­trial congress have rat­i­fied the rec­om­men­da­tions of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of eco­nomic af­fairs, who is the joint ap­pointee of these two leg­isla­tive bod­ies. The up­per in­dus­trial house is elected by la­bor, the lower by cap­i­tal.

72:7.102. Roy­al­ties. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment en­cour­ages in­ven­tion and orig­i­nal cre­ations in the ten re­gional lab­o­ra­to­ries, as­sist­ing all types of ge­niuses—artists, au­thors, and sci­en­tists—and pro­tect­ing their patents. In re­turn the gov­ern­ment takes one half the prof­its re­al­ized from all such in­ven­tions and cre­ations, whether per­tain­ing to ma­chines, books, artistry, plants, or an­i­mals.

72:7.113. In­her­i­tance tax. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment levies a grad­u­ated in­her­i­tance tax rang­ing from one to fifty per cent, de­pend­ing on the size of an es­tate as well as on other con­di­tions.

72:7.124. Mil­i­tary equip­ment. The gov­ern­ment earns a con­sid­er­able sum from the leas­ing of mil­i­tary and naval equip­ment for com­mer­cial and recre­ational us­ages.

72:7.135. Nat­u­ral re­sources. The in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources, when not fully re­quired for the spe­cific pur­poses des­ig­nated in the char­ter of fed­eral state­hood, is turned into the na­tional trea­sury.

72:7.14Fed­eral ap­pro­pri­a­tions, ex­cept war funds as­sessed by the Na­tional Coun­cil of De­fense, are orig­i­nated in the up­per leg­isla­tive house, con­curred in by the lower house, ap­proved by the chief ex­ec­u­tive, and fi­nally val­i­dated by the fed­eral bud­get com­mis­sion of one hun­dred. The mem­bers of this com­mis­sion are nom­i­nated by the state gov­er­nors and elected by the state leg­is­la­tures to serve for twenty-four years, one quar­ter be­ing elected ev­ery six years. Ev­ery six years this body, by a three-fourths bal­lot, chooses one of its num­ber as chief, and he thereby be­comes di­rec­tor-con­trol­ler of the fed­eral trea­sury.