Sunday, October 10, 2004

Today's OED antedating: "soak-the-rich"

Soak-the-rich, slang, punitively progressive tax scheme ("soak," v., sec 7 (f) (b), first use cited 1935): Column titled "Chummy Charlie," by Heywood Broun, New York World-Telegram, April 28, 1934, collected in Collected Edition of Heywood Broun, 1941: "Any reasonable system of taxation should be based on the theory of ‘Soak the rich.’ The rich aren’t going to like it ... ."