An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses (corporations or other legal entities). Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate tax, corporate income tax, or profit tax. Individual income taxes often tax the total income of the individual (with some deductions permitted), while corporate income taxes often tax net income (the difference between gross receipts, expenses, and additional write-offs). Various systems define income differently, and often allow notional reductions of income (such as a reduction based on number of children supported).

Principles of taxes[link]

The "tax net" refers to the types of payment that are taxed, which included personal earnings (wages), capital gains, and business income. The rates for different types of income may vary and some may not be taxed at all. Capital gains may be taxed when realized (e.g. when shares are sold) or when incurred (e.g. when shares appreciate in value). Business income may only be taxed if it is significant or based on the manner in which it is paid. Some types of income, such as interest on bank savings, may be considered as personal earnings (similar to wages) or as a realized property gain (similar to selling shares). In some tax systems, personal earnings may be strictly defined where labor, skill, or investment is required (e.g. wages); in others, they may be defined broadly to include windfalls (e.g. gambling wins).

Tax rates may be progressive, regressive, or proportional. A progressive tax applies progressively higher tax rates as earnings reach higher levels. For example, the first $10,000 in earnings may be taxed at 7%, the next $10,000 at 10%, and any more income at 30%. Alternatively, a flat tax takes all earnings at the same rate. A regressive income tax may apply to income up to a certain amount, such as taxing only the first $90,000 earned. A tax system may use different taxation methods for different types of income.

Personal income tax is often collected on a pay-as-you-earn basis, with small corrections made soon after the end of the tax year. These corrections take one of two forms: payments to the government by taxpayers who did not pay enough during the tax year; and tax refunds from the government to those who overpaid. Income tax systems often have deductions available that lessen the total tax liability by reducing total taxable income. They may allow losses from one type of income to be counted against another. For example, a loss on the stock market may be deducted against taxes paid on wages. Other tax systems may isolate the loss, such that business losses can only be deducted against business tax by carrying forward the loss to later tax years.

The idea of a progressive tax has garnered support from macro economists and political scientists of many different ideologies - ranging from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, although there are differences of opinion about the optimal level of progressivity. Some economists^[1] trace the origin of modern progressive taxation to Adam Smith, who wrote in The Wealth of Nations:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.^[2]

Income taxes are used in most countries around the world, but are not without criticism. Frank Chodorov wrote "... you come up with the fact that it gives the government a prior lien on all the property produced by its subjects." The government "unashamedly proclaims the doctrine of collectivized wealth. ... That which it does not take is a concession."^[3] Some have argued that the economic effects of an income tax system penalize work, discourage saving and investing, and hinder the competitiveness of business and economic growth.^[4][5] Income taxes are also not border-adjustable; meaning the tax component embedded into products via taxes imposed on companies cannot be removed when exported to a foreign country (see Effect of taxes and subsidies on price). Alternate tax systems such as a national sales tax or value added tax remove the tax component when goods are exported and apply the tax component on imports.^[6]

History[link]

The concept of taxing income is a modern innovation and presupposes several things: a money economy, reasonably accurate accounts, a common understanding of receipts, expenses and profits, and an orderly society with reliable records. For most of the history of civilization, these preconditions did not exist, and taxes were based on other factors. Taxes on wealth, social position, and ownership of the means of production (typically land and slaves) were all common. Practices such as tithing, or an offering of firstfruits, existed from ancient times, and can be regarded as a precursor of the income tax, but they lacked precision and certainly were not based on a concept of net increase.

China[link]

In the year 10 CE, Emperor Wang Mang of the Xin Dynasty instituted an unprecedented tax—the income tax—at the rate of 10 percent of profits, for professionals and skilled labor. (Previously, all taxes were either head tax or property tax.) He was overthrown 13 years later in 23 CE and earlier laissez-faire policies were restored during the Later Han.

United Kingdom[link]

One of the first recorded taxes on income was the Saladin tithe introduced by Henry II in 1188 to raise money for the Third Crusade.^[7] The tithe demanded that each layperson in England be taxed a tenth of their personal income and moveable property.^[8] However, the inception date of the modern income tax is typically accepted as 1799.^[9]

Income tax was announced in Britain by William Pitt the Younger in his budget of December 1798 and introduced in 1799, to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic wars. Pitt's new graduated income tax began at a levy of 2d in the pound (0.8333%) on annual incomes over £60 and increased up to a maximum of 2s in the pound (10%) on incomes of over £200 (£170,542 in 2007). Pitt hoped that the new income tax would raise £10 million (£8,527,100,000 in 2007), but actual receipts for 1799 totaled just over £6 million.^[10]

The tax was repealed in 1816 and opponents of the tax, who thought it should only be used to finance wars, wanted all records of the tax destroyed along with its repeal. Records were publicly burned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer but copies were retained in the basement of the tax court.^[11]

United States[link]

In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the US federal government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800) ($20,693 in 2011 dollars).^{[12][verification needed]} This tax was repealed and replaced by another income tax in 1862.^{[13][verification needed]}

In 1894, Democrats in Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman tariff, which imposed the first peacetime income tax. The rate was 2% on income over $4000 ($107,446.15 in 2011 dollars), which meant fewer than 10% of households would pay any. The purpose of the income tax was to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions.^[14] Also, the Panic of 1893 is said^{[by whom?]} to have something to do with the passage of Wilson-Gorman.

In 1895 the United States Supreme Court, in its ruling in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., held a tax based on receipts from the use of property to be unconstitutional. The Court held that taxes on rents from real estate, on interest income from personal property and other income from personal property (which includes dividend income) were treated as direct taxes on property, and therefore had to be apportioned. Since apportionment of income taxes is impractical, this had the effect of prohibiting a federal tax on income from property. However, the Court affirmed that the Constitution did not deny Congress the power to impose a tax on real and personal property, and it affirmed that such would be a direct tax.^[15] Due to the political difficulties of taxing individual wages without taxing income from property, a federal income tax was impractical from the time of the Pollock decision until the time of ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913.

In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. The United States Supreme Court in its ruling Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co. stated that the amendment conferred no new power of taxation but simply prevented the courts from taking the power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belongs. In fiscal year 1918, annual internal revenue collections for the first time passed the billion-dollar mark, rising to $5.4 billion by 1920. With the advent of World War II, employment increased, as did tax collections—to $7.3 billion. The withholding tax on wages was introduced in 1943 and was instrumental in increasing the number of taxpayers to 60 million and tax collections to $43 billion by 1945.^[3]

Types[link]

Personal[link]

A personal or individual income tax is levied on the total income of the individual (with some deductions permitted). It is often collected on a pay-as-you-earn basis, with small corrections made soon after the end of the tax year. These corrections take one of two forms: payments to the government, for taxpayers who have not paid enough during the tax year; and tax refunds from the government for those who have overpaid. Income tax systems will often have deductions available that lessen the total tax liability by reducing total taxable income. They may allow losses from one type of income to be counted against another. For example, a loss on the stock market may be deducted against taxes paid on wages.

Corporate[link]

Corporate tax refers to a direct tax levied on the profits made by companies or associations and often includes capital gains of a company. Earnings are generally considered gross revenue minus expenses. Corporate expenses related to capital expenditures are usually deducted in full (for example, trucks are fully deductible in the Canadian tax system, while a corporate sports car is only partly deductible) over their useful lives by using percentage rates based on the class of asset they belong to.

Accounting principles and tax rules about recognition of expenses and revenue will vary at times, giving rise to book-tax differences. If the book-tax difference is carried over more than a year, it is referred to as a deferred tax. Future assets and liabilities created by a deferred tax are reported on the balance sheet.

See also: Excess profits tax, Windfall profits tax

Payroll[link]

A payroll tax generally refers to two kinds of taxes: employee and employer payroll taxes. Employee payroll taxes are taxes which employers are required to withhold from employees' pay, also known as withholding, pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) tax. These withholdings contribute to the payment of an employee's personal income tax obligation; if the payments exceed this obligation, the employee may be eligible for a tax refund or carryforward to future periods.

Employer payroll taxes are paid from the employer's own funds, either as a fixed charge per employee or as a percentage of each employee's pay. Payroll taxes often cover government social insurance programs, such as social security, health care, unemployment, and disability. These payments do not count toward the income taxes of employees and employers, but are normally deductible by the employer as a business expense.

Inheritance[link]

The inheritance tax, estate tax and death duty are the names given to various taxes which arise on the death of an individual. In international tax law, there is a distinction between an estate tax and an inheritance tax: the former taxes the personal representatives of the deceased, while the latter taxes the beneficiaries of the estate. However, this distinction is not universally recognized. For example, the "inheritance tax" in the UK is a tax on personal representatives, and is therefore, strictly speaking, an excise tax.

Capital gains tax[link]

A capital gains tax is the tax levied on profits from the sale of capital assets. In many cases, the amount of a capital gain is treated as income and subject to the marginal rate of income tax.

In an inflationary environment, capital gains may be, to some extent, illusory. If prices in general have doubled over five years, then selling an asset for twice the price it was purchased at five years earlier represents no gain at all. Partly to compensate for such changes in the value of money over time, some jurisdictions, such as the United States, give a favorable capital gains tax rate based on the length of holding. European jurisdictions have a similar rate reduction to nil on certain property transactions that qualify for the participation exemption. In Canada, 20–50% of the gain is taxable income. In India, Short Term Capital Gains Tax (arising before one year) is 10% [15 % from F.Y 2008-09 as per Finance Act 2008] flat rate of the gains and Long Term Capital Gains Tax is nil for stocks and mutual fund units held one year or more, provided the sale of shares involved payment of the Securities Transaction Tax, and 20% for any other assets held three years or more.

Around the world[link]

Income taxes are used in most countries around the world. The tax systems vary greatly and can be progressive, proportional, or regressive, depending on the type of tax. Comparison of tax rates around the world is a difficult and somewhat subjective enterprise. Tax laws in most countries are extremely complex, and tax burden falls differently on different groups in each country and sub-national unit. Of course, services provided by governments in return for taxation also vary, making comparisons all the more difficult.

Transparency / Public Disclosure[link]

Public disclosure of personal income tax filings occurs in Finland and Norway.^[16]

See also[link]

• Income tax in Australia
• Income tax in Canada
• Income tax in India
• Income tax in the Netherlands
• Income tax in Singapore
• Income tax in Tanzania
• Income tax in the United States
• Lifetime income tax
• Local income tax
• Negative income tax
• Papal income tax
• Wealth tax

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Income tax on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Tax Policy Analysis, OECD Tax Database
• History of the Income Tax in the United States — Infoplease.com

Amos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television.

Amos and Andy began as one of the first radio comedy series, written and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll and originating from station WMAQ in Chicago. After the program was first broadcast in 1928, it grew to become a huge influence on radio series that followed. The show ran as a nightly radio serial from 1928 until 1943, as a weekly situation comedy from 1943 until 1955, and as a nightly disc-jockey program from 1954 until 1960. A television adaptation ran on CBS-TV from 1951 until 1953, and continued in syndicated reruns from 1954 until 1966.^[3]

Origins[link]

Freeman Gosden ('Amos') and Charles Correll ('Andy') in 1929.

Amos 'n' Andy creators Gosden and Correll were white actors familiar with minstrel traditions. They met in Durham, North Carolina,^[4][5] in 1920. Both men had some scattered experience in radio, but it was not until 1925 that the two appeared on Chicago's WQJ.^[6] Their appearances soon led to a regular schedule on another Chicago radio station, WEBH, where their only compensation was a free meal.^[7][8] The pair's hopes were that the radio exposure would lead to stage work; they were able to sell some of their works to local bandleader Paul Ash^[9] which brought them enough name recognition to be offered jobs at the Chicago Tribune's station WGN in 1925. The offer was steady and lucrative enough to allow them to now become full-time broadcasters. Victor Talking Machine Company was also interested enough to offer them a recording contract.^[7]

Since the Tribune syndicated Sidney Smith's popular comic strip The Gumps, which had successfully introduced the concept of daily continuity, WGN executive Ben McCanna thought a serialized version would work on radio. He suggested that Gosden and Correll adapt The Gumps for radio. The idea seemed to involve more risk than either Gosden or Correll was willing to take; neither was adept at imitating female voices, which would have been necessary for The Gumps. They were also conscious of having made names for themselves with their previous act. By playing the roles of characters doing dialect, they would be able to conceal their identities enough to be able to return to their old pattern of entertaining if the radio show was a failure.^[7]

Instead, they proposed a series about "a couple of colored characters" but borrowing certain elements of The Gumps. Their new show, called Sam 'n' Henry,^[10] began on January 12, 1926, and fascinated radio listeners throughout the Midwest.^[11] It became so popular that in 1927 Gosden and Correll requested it be distributed to other stations on phonograph records in a "chainless chain" concept that would have been the first radio syndication. When WGN rejected the proposal, Gosden and Correll quit the show and the station (their last musical program for WGN was announced in the Chicago Daily Tribune of January 29, 1928).^[12] Episodes of Sam 'n' Henry continued to be aired until July 14, 1928.^[13] Contractually, Correll and Gosden's characters belonged to WGN, so when they left WGN, they performed in personal appearances but could not use the character names from the radio show.^[3][7]

WMAQ, the Chicago Daily News station, hired Gosden and Correll and their former WGN announcer, Bill Hay, to create a series similar to Sam 'n' Henry. They offered higher salaries than WGN and the right to pursue the "chainless chain" syndication idea.^[14] The creators later said they named the characters Amos and Andy after hearing two elderly African-Americans greet each other by those names in a Chicago elevator.^[4] Amos 'n' Andy began March 19, 1928^[15] on WMAQ, and prior to airing each program they recorded their show on 78 rpm disks at Marsh Laboratories, operated by electrical recording pioneer Orlando R. Marsh.^[16]

For the program's entire run as a nightly serial, Gosden and Correll portrayed all the male roles, performing over 170 distinct voice characterizations in the show's first decade. With the episodic drama and suspense heightened by cliffhanger endings, Amos 'n' Andy reached an ever-expanding radio audience. It was the first radio program to be distributed by syndication in the United States, and by the end of the syndicated run in August 1929, at least 70 stations besides WMAQ carried the program by means of recordings.^[7]

Early storylines and characters[link]

Amos Jones and Andy Brown worked on a farm near Atlanta, Georgia, and during the episodes of the first week, they made plans to find a better life in Chicago, despite warnings from a friend. With four ham-and-cheese sandwiches and $24, they bought train tickets and headed for Chicago, where they lived in a State Street rooming house and experienced some rough times before launching their own business, the Fresh Air Taxi Company.^[7] (The first car they acquired had no roof; the pair turned it into a selling point.) By 1930, the noted toy maker Louis Marx and Company offered a tin wind-up version of the auto, with Amos and Andy inside, and a wooden stake wagon soon followed.^[17] The toy company produced a special autographed version of the toy as gifts for American leaders, including Herbert Hoover.^[18] There was also a book, All About Amos 'n' Andy and Their Creators, in 1929 by Correll and Gosden (reprinted in 2007 and 2008),^[19][20] and a comic strip in the Chicago Daily News.^[10]

Amos was naïve but honest, hard-working and (after his 1935 marriage to Ruby Taylor) a dedicated family man. Andy was more blustering, with overinflated self-confidence. Andy, being a dreamer, tended to let Amos do most of the work. Their Mystic Knights of the Sea lodge leader, George "the Kingfish" Stevens, was always either trying to lure the two into get-rich-quick schemes, especially the gullible Andy, or else tricking Andy into some kind of trouble. Other characters included John Augustus "Brother" Crawford, an industrious but long-suffering family man; Henry Van Porter, a social-climbing real estate and insurance salesman; Frederick Montgomery Gwindell, a hard-charging newspaperman; Algonquin J. Calhoun, a somewhat crooked lawyer added to the series in 1949, six years after its conversion to a half-hour situation comedy; William Lewis Taylor, the well-spoken, college-educated father of Amos's fiancee; and "Lightning" (Willie Jefferson), a slow-moving Stepin Fetchit-type character.^[7] The Kingfish's catchphrase "Holy mackerel!" soon entered the American lexicon.

Of the three central characters, Correll voiced Andy Brown while Gosden voiced both Amos and the Kingfish. The majority of the scenes were dialogues between either Andy and Amos or Andy and Kingfish. Amos and Kingfish, both voiced by Gosden, only rarely appeared together. Since Correll and Gosden voiced virtually all of the parts, the female characters, such as Ruby Taylor, Kingfish's wife Sapphire, and Andy's various girlfriends, did not initially appear as voiced characters, but entered the plots only as discussed by the male characters. Prior to 1931, when Madame Queen (then voiced by Gosden) took the witness stand in her breach-of-promise lawsuit against Andy, a female-sounding voice was heard only once.^[21] Beginning in 1935, actresses began voicing the female characters and after the program's conversion to a weekly situation-comedy format in 1943 other actors were recruited for some of the male supporting parts.^[2][7] However, Correll and Gosden continued to voice the three central characters on radio until the series ended in 1960.

With the listening audience increasing in the spring and summer of 1928, the show's success prompted the Pepsodent Company to bring it to the NBC Blue Network on August 19, 1929.^[22] At this time the Blue Network was not heard on stations in the West. Western listeners complained to NBC that they wanted to hear the show. Under special arrangements Amos 'n' Andy debuted coast-to-coast November 28, 1929, on NBC's Pacific Orange Network and continued on the Blue. WMAQ was then an affiliate of CBS and its general manager tried to interest that network in picking up the show to no avail.^[7] At the same time, the serial's central characters—Amos, Andy and George "The Kingfish" Stevens—relocated from Chicago to New York City's Harlem. The program was so popular by 1930, that NBC's orders were to interrupt the broadcast of it only for matters of national importance and SOS calls. Correll and Gosden were making a total of $100,000 a year as the stars of the show, which they split three ways, including their announcer, Bill Hay, as he was with them when they started doing radio.^[23]

The story arc of Andy's romance (and subsequent problems) with the Harlem beautician Madame Queen entranced some 40 million listeners during 1930 and 1931, becoming a national phenomenon.^[21][24] Many of the program's plotlines in this period leaned far more to straight drama than comedy, including the near-death of Amos's fiancee Ruby from pneumonia in the spring of 1931,^[25] and Amos's brutal interrogation by police following the murder of the cheap hoodlum Jack Dixon that December. Following official protests by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, Correll and Gosden were forced to abandon that storyline – turning the entire sequence into a bad dream, from which Amos gratefully awoke on Christmas Eve.

The innovations introduced by Gosden and Correll made their creation a turning point for radio drama, as noted by broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod:^[3]

As a result of its extraordinary popularity, Amos 'n' Andy profoundly influenced the development of dramatic radio. Working alone in a small studio, Correll and Gosden created an intimate, understated acting style that differed sharply from the broad manner of stage actors – a technique requiring careful modulation of the voice, especially in the portrayal of multiple characters. The performers pioneered the technique of varying both the distance and the angle of their approach to the microphone to create the illusion of a group of characters.^[23] Listeners could easily imagine that that they were actually in the taxicab office, listening in on the conversation of close friends. The result was a uniquely absorbing experience for listeners who in radio's short history had never heard anything quite like Amos 'n' Andy.

While minstrel-style wordplay humor was common in the formative years of the program, it was used less often as the series developed, giving way to a more sophisticated approach to characterization. Correll and Gosden were fascinated by human nature, and their approach to both comedy and drama drew from their observations of the traits and motivations that drive the actions of all people: While often overlapping popular stereotypes of African-Americans, there was at the same time a universality to their characters which transcended race.... Beneath the dialect and racial imagery, the series celebrated the virtues of friendship, persistence, hard work, and common sense, and as the years passed and the characterizations were refined, Amos 'n' Andy achieved an emotional depth rivaled by few other radio programs of the 1930s.

Above all, Correll and Gosden were gifted dramatists. Their plots flowed gradually from one into the next, with minor subplots building in importance until they took over the narrative, before receding to give way to the next major sequence, and seeds for future storylines were often planted months in advance. It was this complex method of story construction that kept the program fresh, and enabled Correll and Gosden to keep their audience in a constant state of suspense. The technique they developed for radio from that of the narrative comic strip endures to the present day as the standard method of storytelling in serial drama.

Only a few dozen episodes of the original serial have survived in recorded form. However, a number of scripts from the original episodes have been discovered, and were utilized by Elizabeth McLeod in preparing her 2005 book cited above.

Amos 'n' Andy was officially transferred by NBC from the Blue Network to the Red Network in 1935, although the vast majority of stations carrying the show remained the same. Several months later, Gosden and Correll moved production of the show from NBC's Merchandise Mart studios in Chicago to Hollywood.^[26][27] After a long and successful run with Pepsodent, the program changed sponsors in 1938 to Campbell's Soup; because of Campbell's closer relationship with CBS, the series switched to that network on April 3, 1939.

In 1943, after 4,091 episodes, the radio program went from a 15-minute CBS weekday dramatic serial to an NBC half-hour weekly comedy. While the five-a-week show often had a quiet, easygoing feeling, the new version was a full-fledged sitcom in the Hollywood sense, with a regular studio audience (for the first time in the show's history) and an orchestra. More outside actors, including many African-American comedy professionals, were brought in to fill out the cast.^[28] Many of the half-hour programs were written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, later the writing team behind Leave It to Beaver and The Munsters. In the new version, Amos became a peripheral character to the more dominant Andy and Kingfish duo, although Amos was still featured in the traditional Christmas show, where he explains the Lord's Prayer to his daughter, Arbadella,^[7] voiced by Elinor Harriot and later by the Asian American Barbara Jean Wong.^[2][29][30] The Christmas show also became a part of the later television series.^[31] The later radio program and the TV version were advanced for the time, depicting Blacks in a variety of roles including successful business owners and managers, professionals and public officials, in addition to the comic characters at show's core.^[32] It anticipated many later comedies featuring working class characters (both Black and White) including All in the Family, The Honeymooners and Sanford and Son.

By the fall of 1948, the show was back on CBS again.^[33] In that same year, Correll and Gosden sold all rights to Amos 'n' Andy to CBS for a reported 2.5 million dollars.^[34]

Sponsors[link]

Advertising pioneer Albert Lasker often took credit for having created the show as a promotional vehicle. After the associations with Pepsodent toothpaste (1929–37) and Campbell's Soup (1937–43), primary sponsors included Lever Brothers' Rinso detergent (1943–50), the Rexall drugstore chain (1950–54) and CBS' own Columbia brand of television sets (1954–55). President Calvin Coolidge was said to be among the devoted listeners. Huey P. Long took his nickname of "Kingfish" from the show. At the peak of the popularity, many movie theaters began the practice of stopping the films for the 15 minutes of the Amos 'n' Andy show and then playing the program through the theater's sound system or simply by placing a radio on the stage.^[7] Some theaters attempted to attract patrons by noting the fact that they offered the broadcast in their advertisements. NBC sought to stop the practice by charging the theaters who did so with copyright infringement, claiming that charging admission for a free broadcast was not legal.^[35]

[edit] Controversy and the Pittsburgh Courier protest

The first sustained protest against the program found its inspiration in the December 1930 issue of Abbott's Monthly, when Bishop W.J. Walls of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church wrote an article sharply denouncing Amos 'n' Andy, singling out the lower-class characterizations and the "crude, repetitious, and moronic" dialogue. The Pittsburgh Courier was the nation's second largest African-American newspaper at the time, and publisher Robert Vann expanded Walls' criticism into a full-fledged crusade during a six-month period in 1931.^[36]

The paper, among other publicly stated efforts, published a petition to get the program pulled from the air, with a stated goal of one million signatures. While many prominent African-American newspapers refused to back the drive, the Courier found support from Bishop Walls, the National Association of Colored Waiters and Hotel Employees and several African-American fraternal orders. The NAACP national office declined to endorse the protest, although some of their local chapters stood behind the effort. Before the campaign was dropped, the paper claimed to have 675,000 names on their petition, although the figure was never independently verified. Gosden and Correll never commented on the Courier's efforts.

Broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod argues that the characterizations on the daily serial version were actually much more sympathetic and rounded than that of other shows of the period,^[7] which perpetuated 19th century minstrel show stereotypes and did not equal the immense success of Amos 'n' Andy. Examples include the blackface act by the Two Black Crows, who did two-man comedy routines in vaudeville, short subjects and comedy records and minstrel headliner Emmett Miller, who recorded a series of popular songs for Okeh Records in the late 1920s.

It can also be noted that Andy and Kingfish's use of malapropisms (i.e. misuse of vocabulary) had been a comedic staple for centuries and was employed by a number of white comedians of the day, including Chico Marx, Lou Costello, and Leo Gorcey.

Film[link]

In 1930, RKO Radio Pictures brought Gosden and Correll to Hollywood to do an Amos 'n' Andy feature film, Check and Double Check (a catchphrase from the radio show). The cast included a mix of white and black performers (the latter including Duke Ellington and his orchestra) with Gosden and Correll playing Amos 'n' Andy in blackface.^[37] The film pleased neither critics nor Gosden and Correll themselves, but briefly became RKO's biggest box-office hit prior to King Kong before falling off rapidly. Audiences were curious to see what their radio favorites looked like and were expecting to see African-Americans instead of white men in blackface. RKO ruled out any plans for a sequel.^[38] Gosden and Correll did lend their voices to a pair of Amos 'n' Andy cartoon shorts in 1934: The Rasslin' Match and The Lion Tamer. These were also not successful.^[39] Years later, Gosden was quoted as calling Check and Double Check "just about the worst movie ever." Gosden and Correll also posed for publicity pictures in blackface. They were also part of The Big Broadcast of 1936 as Amos 'n' Andy.^[40]

Television[link]

Hired by CBS as producers of the television show, Gosden and Correll were ready to try bringing the show to television as early as 1946; the search for cast members went on for 4 years before filming began.^[34][41][42] According to a 1950 newspaper story, Gosden and Correll had initial aspirations of voicing the characters Amos, Andy and Kingfish for television, while the actors hired for these roles performed and apparently were to lip-sync the story lines.^[43] A year later, both spoke about how they realized they were visually unsuited to play the television roles, citing difficulties with making the Check and Double-Check film. No further mention was made about Gosden and Correll continuing to voice the key male roles in the television series.^[44] Corell and Gosden did record the lines of the main male characters for the television show to serve as a guideline for the television show dialogue at one point. In 1951, the men set a date of 1953 for their retirement from broadcasting; there was speculation that their radio roles might be turned over to African American actors at that time.^[45]

Adapted to television, The Amos 'n Andy Show was produced from June 1951 to April 1953 with 78 filmed episodes, sponsored by the Blatz Brewing Company.^[32] The television series used African-American actors in the main roles, although the actors were instructed to keep their voices and speech patterns as close to Gosden and Correll's as possible.^[46] Produced at the Hal Roach Studios for CBS, it was one of the first television series to be filmed with a multicamera setup, four months before the more famous I Love Lucy used the technique. The lighting cameraman (Director of Photography) was Robert de Grasse ASC. The operating cameramen (camera operators) were Robert de Grasse, Lucien Andriot ASC, and Benjamin Kline ASC. The classic theme song was "The Perfect Song."^[7] In the TV series, however, the theme became Gaetano Braga's "Angel's Serenade", which sounded similar to "The Perfect Song" (and because it was in the public domain), performed by The Jeff Alexander Chorus. The program went on the air June 28, 1951.^[47][48]

The main roles in the television series were played by the following African-American actors:^[49]

• Amos Jones - Alvin Childress
• Andrew Hogg Brown (Andy) - Spencer Williams
• George "Kingfish" Stevens - Tim Moore
• Sapphire Stevens - Ernestine Wade
• Ramona Smith (Sapphire's Mama) - Amanda Randolph
• Madame Queen - Lillian Randolph
• Algonquin J. Calhoun - Johnny Lee^[50]
• Lightnin' - Nick Stewart (aka, Nick O'Demus)

This time, the NAACP mounted a formal protest almost as soon as the television version began,^[32] and that pressure was considered a primary factor in the video version's cancellation (the sponsor, Blatz Beer, was targeted as well, finally discontinuing their advertising support in June 1953).^[51] It has been suggested that CBS erred in its choice of having the program premiere during the NAACP national convention for that year, as the timing may have increased the objections to it.^[52] The show was widely repeated in syndicated reruns until 1966 when CBS acquiesced to pressure from the NAACP and the growing civil rights movement and withdrew the program.^[53][54] Until recently, the television show had been released only on bootleg videotape versions, but by 2005, 72 of the 78 known TV episodes were available in bootleg DVD sets.

When the show was cancelled, 65 episodes had been produced. An additional 13 episodes were produced to be added to the syndicated rerun package. These episodes were focused on Kingfish, with little participation from Amos 'n' Andy. This is because these episodes were to be titled The Adventures of Kingfish, but they premiered under the Amos 'n' Andy title instead.^[55] The additional episodes first aired on CBS on January 4, 1955.^[56] Plans were made for a vaudeville act of the television program in August 1953, with Tim Moore, Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams playing the same roles. It is not known whether there were any performances.^[57] Still eager for television success, Gosden, Correll and CBS made initial efforts to give the series another try. The plan was to begin televising Amos 'n' Andy in the fall of 1956, with both of its creators appearing on television in a split screen with the proposed African-American cast.^[58]

A group of cast members began a "TV Stars of Amos 'n' Andy" cross-country tour in 1956, which was halted by CBS; the network considered it an infringement of their exclusive rights to the show and its characters.^[46] Following the threatened legal action which brought the 1956 tour to an end, Moore, Childress, Williams and Lee were able to perform like this for at least one night in 1957 in Windsor, Ontario.^[59]

In 1978, a one-hour documentary film, Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy, aired in television syndication (and in later years, on PBS). It told a brief history of the franchise from its radio days to the CBS series, and featured interviews with then-surviving cast members. The film also contained a select complete episode of the classic TV series that had not been seen since it was pulled from the air in 1966.^[60]

In 2004, the now-defunct Trio network brought Amos 'n' Andy back to television for one night in an effort to re-introduce the series to 21st century audiences. Its festival featured the Anatomy of a Controversy documentary, followed by the 1930 Check and Double Check film.^[61]

Legal status[link]

Although the characters of Amos and Andy themselves are in the public domain, as well as the show's trademarks, title, format, basic premise, and all materials created prior to 1948 (Silverman vs CBS, 870 F.2d 40),^[62] the TV series itself is protected by copyright. CBS bought out Gosden & Correll's ownership of the program and characters in 1948 and the courts decided in the Silverman ruling that all post-1948 Amos 'n' Andy material was protected. All Amos 'n' Andy material created prior to 1948, such as episodes of the old radio show, is considered to be in the public domain. This does not include the TV series, which was produced much later and as such is protected under U.S. copyright law (per the Silverman decision).^[63] There are no official home video releases of Amos 'n' Andy as of this date; all are unlicensed bootlegs. In 1998, CBS initiated copyright infringement suits against three companies selling the videos and did issue a "cease and desist" order to a national mail-order outfit who offered various episodes on videocassettes, via late-night TV ads during the late '90s.^[64][65] Any official video/DVD release (if it ever does happen) will probably be handled via Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS DVD.

Later years[link]

In 1955 the format of the radio show was changed from a weekly to a daily early evening half-hour to include playing recorded music between sketches (with occasional guests appearing), and the series was renamed The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall. The final Amos 'n' Andy radio show was broadcast November 25, 1960.^[2] Although by the 1950s the popularity of the show was well below its peak of the 1930s, Gosden and Correll had managed to outlast most of the radio shows that came in their wake.

In 1961, Gosden and Correll attempted one last televised effort, albeit in a "disguised" version. They were the voices in a prime time animated cartoon, Calvin and the Colonel, featuring anthropomorphic animals whose voices and situations were almost exactly those of Andy and the Kingfish (and adapting several of the original "Amos 'n' Andy" radio scripts).^[5] This effort at reviving the series in a way that was intended to be less racially offensive ended after one season on ABC, although it remained quite popular in syndicated reruns in Australia for several years afterwards.

In 1988, the Amos 'n' Andy program was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.^[66] A pair of parallel, one-block streets in south Dallas, Texas are named Amos Street and Andy Street in honor of these performers.

Radio historian Elizabeth McLeod examined thousands of radio script pages in order to write her authoritative 223-page study, The Original Amos ’n’ Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll and the 1928–1943 Radio Serial, published by McFarland in 2005.^[7] Currently, the scripts of Amos 'n' Andy are performed on a shortwave station broadcasting from Maine, WBCQ on 7490 kHz and also on the internet at 12:00am, 8am and 8pm eastern by Ed Bolton, who performs all roles. The radio show still airs occasionally on various talk radio stations in Canada.

Later work by cast members[link]

Comedian Tim Moore made numerous public appearances and was a guest on television on shows such as Jack Paar's Tonight Show and the Paul Coates Show. He also was a guest on radio's Johnny Otis Show. And in 1958, he headlined a stand-up comedy act at the Mogambo Night Club in Hollywood. Ernestine Wade (Sapphire) and Lillian Randolph (Madame Queen) appeared together on an episode of That's My Mama called "Clifton's Sugar Mama" on October 2, 1974.^[67] They were friends of "Mama" played by Theresa Merritt who wanted to see Clifton played by Clifton Davis (later of TV show Amen) at the beginning of the episode. Ernestine played Augusta and Lillian played Mrs. Birdie. Jester Hairston (who played Henry Van Porter and Leroy Smith on "Amos 'n' Andy") was a regular on both That's My Mama as "Wildcat" and on Amen as "Rolly Forbes."^[68] He was also quite prominent in a brief role as a butler in the racially charged film In the Heat of the Night.

Johnny Lee released a record (as "Johnnie Lee") in July 1949 called "You Can't Lose A Broken Heart" (Columbia Records #30172), with backup vocals by The Ebonaires. Lee also starred in an all-black musical comedy called "Sugar Hill" in 1949 at Las Palmas Theatre in California.^[69] Horace "Nick O'Demus" Stewart had a memorable cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as a hapless driver run off the highway. With all their belongings falling off their overloaded truck as he tries to retain control, Stewart finally looks at his wife and intones "I said it before and I'll say it again, I didn't want to move to California." Johnny Lee (Calhoun) and Nick Stewart (Lightnin') both provided voices in the Walt Disney film Song of the South in 1946. Johnny did the voice of Br'er Rabbit and Nick was heard as Br'er Bear.^[70]

References[link]

Listen to[link]

• Old Time Radio Downloads: Amos and Andy (23 episodes)
• Amos 'n' Andy discuss the Presidential election
• Archive.org Old Time Radio - Amos 'n' Andy
• Amos 'n' Andy - OTR - Old Time Radio (108 episodes)
• OTR Network Library: Amos 'n' Andy (219 episodes)
• Tom Heathwood interviews broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod
• Outlaws Old Time Radio Corner

External links[link]

• "Amos and Andy" Old Time Radio
• "Amos and Andy"
• The Amos 'n Andy Show at the Internet Movie Database
• Amos 'n' Andy: Past as Prologue?
• Meet Amos 'n' Andy
• Rich Samuels' Broadcasting in Chicago: 1921-1989
• Amos 'n' Andy History of the 1950s TV Show

Watch[link]

• Amos 'n' Andy: Anatomy of a Controversy at Internet Movie Database-Video by Hulu
• 1934 Amos 'n' Andy Cartoon, The Lion Tamer, at Internet Archive

Milton Friedman

Chicago School of Economics
Born	(1912-07-31)July 31, 1912 Brooklyn, New York
Died	November 16, 2006(2006-11-16) (aged 94) San Francisco, California
Nationality	American
Institution	Hoover Institution (1977–2006) University of Chicago (1946–77) Columbia University (1937–41, 1943–45, 1964–65) NBER (1937–40)
Field	Economics
Alma mater	Columbia University (Ph.D.), 1946, University of Chicago (M.A.), 1933 Rutgers University (B.A.), (1932)
Opposed	John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Rothbard
Influences	Adam Smith, Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, Murray Rothbard, Jacob Viner, Harold Hotelling, Arthur Burns, Friedrich Hayek, Homer Jones, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Simons, George Stigler
Influenced	Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan, David D. Friedman, Anna J. Schwartz, Ben Bernanke, Gary Becker, Thomas Sowell, Harry Markowitz, Chicago Boys, William F. Buckley, Jr., Cato Institute
Contributions	Price theory, Monetarism, applied macroeconomics, floating exchange rates, volunteer military, Permanent income hypothesis, Friedman test
Awards	John Bates Clark Medal (1951) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1976) Presidential Medal of Freedom (1988) National Medal of Science (1988)
Signature

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and is known for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy.^[1] As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, he influenced the research agenda of the economics profession. A survey of economists ranked Friedman as the second most popular economist of the twentieth century behind John Maynard Keynes,^[2] and The Economist described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."^[3]

Friedman's challenges to what he later called "naive Keynesian" (as opposed to New Keynesian) theory^[4] began with his 1950s reinterpretation of the consumption function, and he became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies.^[5] In the late 1960s he described his own approach (along with all of mainstream economics) as using "Keynesian language and apparatus" yet rejecting its "initial" conclusions.^[6] During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate (e.g., by increasing aggregate demand) only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate.^[7] He argued that the Phillips curve was not stable and predicted what would come to be known as stagflation.^[8] Friedman argued that, given the existence of the Federal Reserve, a constant small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy.^[9]

Friedman was an economic adviser to conservative President Ronald Reagan. His political philosophy extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with minimal intervention. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment, and his support for school choice led him to found The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and education vouchers.^[10] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve's response to the global financial crisis.^[11]

Milton Friedman's works include many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos, and lectures, and cover a broad range of topics of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. His books and essays were widely read, and have had an international influence, including in Communist countries.^{[12][13][14][15]}

Early life[link]

Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to recent Jewish immigrants Jenő Friedman and Sára Landau from Beregszász in Austria-Hungary (now Berehove in Ukraine), both of whom worked as dry goods merchants. Shortly after Milton's birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. A talented student, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, just before his 16th birthday.^[16][17]

Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he specialized in mathematics and initially intended to become an actuary. During his time at Rutgers, Friedman became influenced by two economics professors, Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones, who convinced him that modern economics could help end the Great Depression. After graduating from Rutgers in 1932, Friedman was offered two scholarships to do graduate work; one being Mathematics at Brown University and the other being Economics at the University of Chicago.^[18]Friedman chose the latter, thus earning an M.A. in 1933. He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. It was at Chicago that Friedman met his future wife, economist Rose Director. During 1933–34 he had a fellowship at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with renowned statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. He was back in Chicago for 1934–35, spending the year working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on Theory and Measurement of Demand. That year, Friedman formed what would prove to be lifelong friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis.^[19]

Public service[link]

Friedman was initially unable to find academic employment, so during 1935, he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists.^[20] At this stage, Friedman said that he and his wife "regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation," but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration."^[21] Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease," arguing that the money supply should simply have been expanded, instead of contracted.^[22] In the publication Monetary History of the United States by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, they argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking by the Federal reserve and the continuous crises of the banking system.^[23]

During 1935, he began work for the National Resources Committee, which was then working on a large consumer budget survey. Ideas from this project later became a part of his Theory of the Consumption Function. Friedman began employment with the National Bureau of Economic Research during autumn 1937 to assist Simon Kuznets in his work on professional income. This work resulted in their jointly authored publication Incomes from Independent Professional Practice, which introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income, a major component of the Permanent Income Hypothesis that Friedman worked out in greater detail in the 1950s. The book hypothesizes that professional licensing artificially restricts the supply of services and raises prices.

During 1940, Friedman was appointed an assistant professor teaching Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but encountered antisemitism in the Economics department and decided to return to government service.^[24][25] Friedman spent 1941–43 working on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation. He helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system, since the federal government badly needed money in order to fight the war.^[26] He later said, "I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now."^[27]

Academic career[link]

Early years[link]

In 1943, Friedman joined the Division of War Research at Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Harold Hotelling), where he spent the rest of World War II working as a mathematical statistician, focusing on problems of weapons design.^[28]

During 1945, Friedman submitted Incomes from Independent Professional Practice (co-authored with Kuznets and completed during 1940) to Columbia as his doctoral dissertation. The university awarded him a Ph.D. during 1946. Friedman spent the 1945–46 academic year teaching at the University of Minnesota (where his friend George Stigler was employed). On February 12, 1945, his son, David D. Friedman was born.

University of Chicago[link]