The progress of the enormous debts which at present oppress, and will in the long-run probably ruin, all the great nations of Europe, has been pretty uniform. (written in 1776)
- Adam Smith - Topics: Debt, Default, Government.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.
- Albert Einstein - Topics: Tax, Government.
Are you joking, having faith in the U.S. administration. I wonder who in the world would have a faith in the U.S. administration. For sure not someone who thinks.
- Marc Faber - Topics: Government.
With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.
- Friedrich A. Hayek - Topics: Fiat Currency, Government, Inflation.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
- Thomas Jefferson - Topics: Government.
The government takes your money away with taxes and then hires people to bother you even more.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
- Frédéric Bastiat - Topics: Government.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it.
- Ronald Reagan - Topics: Tax, Government.
Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Debt, Government, Monetary Policy, Tax.
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
- Will Rogers - Topics: Tax, Government.
The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer, it will go to India. If we purchase fruits and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car, it will go to Germany and Japan. If we purchase useless crap, it will go to Taiwan. In short, none of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on beer, since this isthe only product still produced in the US. I've been doing my part...
One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.
- Ron Paul - Topics: Tax, Government.
One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
- Martin Luther King - Topics: Government.
The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
- John Maynard Keynes - Topics: Government, Debt.
I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take them violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop.
- Friedrich A. Hayek - Topics: Government, Cryptocurrency, Central Bank, Banking System.
I put it to you: if you rob people of their ability to determine their own future, they will turn to violence.
- Nigel Farage - Topics: Government, Eurocrisis, Debt, Austerity.
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion.
- David Ricardo - Topics: Fiat Currency, Government.
Socialism works fine until you run out of someone else's money.
- Margaret Thatcher - Topics: Government, Socialism, Tax.
Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Government.
The US has 75 trillions of unpaid for liabilities in a 15 trillion economy. How are we ever going to be pay for it? It's a number that cannot happen. So I don't worry about it. The far more interesting question is: what happens at the moment we realise that we can't pay 75 trillion?
- John Mauldin - Topics: Debt, Default, Government.
The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.
- John Maynard Keynes - Topics: Government, Inflation.
They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all, that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because "we owe it to ourselves". Such pleasant dreams in the past have always been shattered by national insolvency or a runaway inflation. All government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation and inflation itself is merely a form, and a particularly vicious form, of taxation.
- Henry Hazlitt - Topics: Government, Inflation, Tax.
The government must keep its hands off the recession, so that the recession process can quickly eliminate the distortions imposed by the government-created inflationary boom
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Government, Monetary Policy.
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.
Governments are like primitive cannibals feasting on a great treasure trove of sheeple. You can't force them out, and you can't vote them out. But you can sure as hell starve them out. When enough people pick up and leave, essentially voting with their feet, it accelerates the system crash.
- Simon Black - Topics: Tax, Government.
