Dan Sanchez on this insidious evil, at Mises. Relevant sentences: “Instead of obnoxiously demanding that the public hand over its wealth, the government just quietly siphons it away. This way it avoids public outrage and resistance, and so is able to maximize the loot. As Jean Baptiste Colbert (finance minister to King Louis XIV of France) put it, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing.” With inflation, the geese hardly hiss, because they think they are simply molting, and are unaware they are even being plucked.”
