Benjamin Franklin Wrote

in 1789 to his friend Jean Baptiste Leroy
about 'the certainty of death and taxes'.
Daniel Defoe used a similar phrase
in his 'Devil's Dictionary', written sixty
years earlier.
Has the phrase lost resonance with modernity
because we have ceased to credit The Devil,
and deliver him his due?
Or has the phrase died because we are now
more indifferent to death
and more cynical about government and taxation?

Death and taxes are as certain now
as they ever were. But the new
capitalism is accompanied by an
absolute belief in growth, measured
purely by money.
In the older more limited growth the certainty
of taxes was relatively simple,
and growth was measured wider.
The new measures of growth depend
more than we prefer to think on
the armies of accountants and lawyers
who find legislative loopholes for use
by those rich enough
to believe that what they have is worth hoarding
in tax havens.
The value of these secret secretions
rests on the belief that the effort required
will outweigh the cost-the drain on the creativity,
relationships and energy for the activities
which are the origins of the wealth.

The hoarding is where death reaps
his reward, and where the devil returns,
disguised, unawares to us all....