The relation of the sales tax to the problem of social balance is admirably direct. The community is rich in privately produced goods. It is poor in public services. The obvious solution is to tax the former to provide the latter -- by making private goods more expensive, that public goods are made more abundant. Motion pictures, electronic equipment, and cigarettes are made more costly so that schools can be more handsomely supported. We pay more for soap, make-ups, and vacuum cleaners in order that we may have cleaner cities and less occasion to use them. We have more expensive cars and gasoline so that we may have highways and streets on which to drive them. Food being comparatively cheap and abundant, we tax it in order to have better services and better health in which to enjoy it. This straightforward solution has the further advantage that sales taxation can be employed with fair efficiency by states and even by cities. It is in the services rendered by these governments that the problem of social balance is especially severe. The yield of the sales tax increases with increasing production. As wants are planned for private goods, more benefits are provided for public use. The general property tax, the principal alternative to the sales tax, is rigid and inflexible. Since its rates must ordinarily be raised for additional services, including those that are associated with increasing income and product, the burden of proving need is especially heavy. This tax is a poor servant of social balance.