Articles of Confederation vs. Constitution

The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution each had their own impacts on the United States economy. It can be shown that the drafting of the Constitution reversed the control of economic authority between the national government and the states, specifically regarding the laying and levying of taxes. The stipulations of taxation are clarified in the Articles and the Constitution through Article VIII and Article I, Section 8, respectively. Both statements provide for an easy analysis of taxation considering the means of taxation and how it is assessed, who collects the taxes, and the purpose of these duties. An additional observation can be made regarding the effects of slavery on the Constitution and how that is reflective of the economic impacts of the document. With the comparison of these aspects, a conclusion can be made about the reasoning behind the change of this provision in the Articles. The American Revolution resulted in a substantial amount of debt for the United States. To finance the War of Independence, Congress had borrowed large sums of money by selling interest-bearing bonds and paying soldiers and suppliers in notes to be redeemed in the future (Foner, 200). The Continental Congress owed $42 million at the end of the revolution (Lecture #9). The states lacked a secure source of revenue, so they had to address taxation in their first written constitution, The Articles of Confederation. They used this constitution as an initial attempt to apportion taxes to the states. The Articles of Confederation primarily addresses taxation in its eighth article. According to this article, the government is levying taxes to each state as a whole, based on the value of each state. The taxes collected will be used to fund a single account to pay the charges of war. This is clarified in the document when Article VIII states that the “common treasury which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each