Frederic Bastiat on taxation

Your principle has placed these words above the entrance of the legislative chamber: “whosoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of legal plunder.”  And what has been the result?  All classes have flung themselves upon the doors of the chamber crying: “A share of the plunder for me, for me!

~ Frederic Bastiat

Walter Williams on social justice

Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn.  Do you disagree?  Well then tell me how much belongs to you and why.

~ Walter Williams

The Wall Street Journal on a global minimum corporate tax of 15%

Nearly 140 countries agreed Friday to the most sweeping overhaul of global tax rules in a century, a move that aims to curtail tax avoidance by multinational corporations and raise additional tax revenue of as much as $150 billion annually. 

But the accord, which is a decade in the making, now must be implemented by the signatories, a path that is likely to be far from smooth, including in a closely divided U.S. Congress. 

The reform sets out a global minimum corporate tax of 15%, targeted at preventing companies from exploiting low-tax jurisdictions. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the floor set by the global minimum tax was a victory for the U.S. and its ability to raise money from companies.

~ Paul Hannon and Richard Rubin, "Corporate Taxes Poised to Rise After 136-Country Deal," The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2021

A.R.J. Turgot on taxation

It seems that Public Finance, like a greedy monster, has been lying in wait for the entire wealth of the people. 

~ A.R.J. Turgot, 1763

Kevin Duffy on how a progressive sees taxation

This is how a progressive sees taxation: 

1) Taxes are a benefit to the common good. 

2) Taxes are the price of freedom. 

3) The rich hire accountants to avoid paying their fair share. 

4) The rich have nearly all of the wealth (an unfair distribution). 

5) Those at the bottom pay all the taxes (even though the rich have all the money); very unfair. 

6) The government is constantly starved for "revenue" so those at the bottom suffer even more. 

Ok, admittedly, this is an exaggeration, but there is a lot of truth to this, don't you think?

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, March 12, 2021

Lysander Spooner on taxation and the Constitution

It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other. . . . 

But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, say to a man: “Your money, or your life.” And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. 

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. 

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the“protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting”you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave. 

~ Lysander Spooner, No Treason, No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority (1870), p.17

Lovers of liberty mourn the death of the great Walter Williams

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn.  Do you disagree?  Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?

~ Walter E. Williams, R.I.P.

Walter Williams
1936-2020

John Marshall on taxation

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

~ John Marshall, 1819

John Marshall
1954-1968

Oliver Wendell Holmes on taxation

I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

James Garfield on the church and taxation

The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.

~ James Garfield

John Maynard Keynes anticipates supply side economics

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

~ John Maynard Keynes, 1933 Essay: The Means to Prosperity, section I: The nature of the problem, p. 338, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Macmillan Cambridge University Press, 1972

~ Joseph Sobran on the two economies

As I see it now, there are really two economies — two distinct systems of producing and exchanging wealth.  Or rather, two systems that purport to do these things, though only one of them really produces anything, and the other is organized by a peculiar form of exchange.

The first is what is called the trade economy — the one summed up in the phrase "the free market."  The other might be called "the tax economy."

The trade economy is so familiar there is no need to say much about it, beyond pointing out that its operative principle is consent.  Its mechanism is the price system.

The tax economy is something fairly new—to America anyway.  A few generations ago the amount of wealth taken in taxes was only a sliver of the country's aggregate wealth.  But the government's share has increased to such an extent that it has become a whole separate economy.

~ Joseph Sobran, "The Two Economies," The Free Market, January 1991

Murray Rothbard on how to treat politicians

But if taxation is robbery, then it follows as the night the day that those people who engage in, and live off, robbery are a gang of thieves.  Hence the government is a group of thieves, and deserves, morally, aesthetically, and philosophically, to be treated exactly as a group of less socially respectable ruffians would be treated.

~ Murray Rothbard

Thomas Jefferson on the tyranny of taxes

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson
1902-1903

Eike Batista on the reasonable tax rates in Brazil

Countries like Brazil and Colombia have allowed the private sector to own national oil company or resource company assets. See, this is something people have to understand. The taxation, the government take, is very reasonable. In Brazil, the government take is 52%. In Angola, which is in Africa, it's 85[%]. So, it's really wealth creation for our shareholders.

~Eike Batista, chairman and CEO, EBX Group, CNBC interview, May 4, 2011

Frédéric Bastiat on paving the way for plunder

When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

Barron's on state tax burdens

California has the nation's fourth-highest income tax (10.55%) behind Hawaii and Oregon (both with 11%) and New Jersey (10.75%). It also has the sixth highest overall U.S. tax burden, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. In contrast, Texas has the eighth-lowest tax burden and is one of nine states that don't tax earned income. The others: Washington, Florida, Tennessee, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada and Alaska.

~ Karen Hube, "Fleeing the Tax Man," Barron's, September 28, 2009

Keynes on government deficits and taxation

It is common to speak as though, when a Government pays its way by inflation, the people of the country avoid taxation. We have seen that this is not so. What is raised by printing notes is just as much taken from the public as is a beer-duty or an income-tax. What a Government spends the public pay for. There is no such thing as an uncovered deficit.

~ John Maynard Keynes, famous British economist, in his Tract on Monetary Reform published in 1923

Kevin Duffy on government: illusion and reality

Government is the illusion that we can all live at the expense of everyone else, and the reality that a small band of thieves can live at the expense of the rest of us.

~ Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management, July 2, 2008

Laurence Vance on taxation

Taxes should be repealed or reduced, not replaced or reformed. Advocates of liberty and less government should focus not on fairness but on lowness. 

~ Laurence M. Vance, “There Is Still No Such Thing as a Fair Tax, " Mises.org., May 15, 2008