When a man spends his own money to buy something for
himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he
spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for
someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but
somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's
money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he
buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man
spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesnt care how
much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for
you. Milton Friedman
The great virtue of a free market system is that it
does not care what color people are; it does not care what their
religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you
want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to
enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help
one another. Milton Friedman
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until
you see what it costs when it's free. P.J. O'Rourke (1993)
In general, the art of government consists in taking
as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to
the other. Voltaire (1764)
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity,
and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays
himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the
government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing
to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a
voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that
he'll do good with his own money if a gun is held to his head.
P.J. O'Rourke
Government is the great fiction, through which
everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederic Bastiat
Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering,
well-being to misery must defend without compromise private
ownership in the means of production. Ludwig von Mises (1920)
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into
prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift
himself up by the handle. Winston Churchill (1903)
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to
give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right
to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else,
including themselves. Thomas Sowell (1992)
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him
poorer. Ludwig von Mises
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt
must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated
and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If
the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to
work, instead of living on public assistance. Marcus Tullius
Cicero, 55 BC
America's abundance was not created by public
sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free
men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their
own private fortunes. Ayn Rand
Every individual necessarily labors to render the
annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither
intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is
promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as
in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end
which was not part of his intention. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more
of both. James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
The welfare state reduces a citizen to a client,
subordinates them to a bureaucrat, and subjects them to rules that
are anti-work, anti-family, anti-opportunity and anti-property
Humans forced to suffer under such anti-human rules naturally
develop pathologies. The evening news is the natural result of the
welfare state. Unknown
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their
origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to
governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and
laissez faire. Ludwig von Mises
Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect
the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for
the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and
to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically
favored companies. Alan Burris, A Liberty Primer
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout
the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can
any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. Frank
Chodorov
The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and
especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source
of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws.
We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most,
anti-black laws on the statute books. Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize
winning economist
Every man has a property in his own person. This
nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the
work of his hands are properly his. John Locke, 1690
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with
forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent
to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various
activities. Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher
What's *just* has been debated for centuries 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 Williams
A society that robs an individual of the product of
his effort
is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held
together by institutionalized gang violence. Ayn Rand
There are people who think that plunder loses all its
immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine
a more alarming situation. Frιdιric Bastiat
The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by
promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation
Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace. H. L.
Mencken
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State.
They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone.
Frιdιric Bastiat
We are living in a sick society filled with people who
would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to
demand that the government do it for them. William L. Comer
Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating
the economic activities of millions. One is central direction
involving the use of coercion the technique of the army and of the
modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of
individuals the technique of the marketplace. Milton Friedman
Past studies by and large confirm the prediction that
higher minimum wages reduce employment opportunities and raise
unemployment, particularly among teenagers, minorities and other
low-skilled workers. Masanori Hashimoto
It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it
progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and
competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense
of duty. Albert Einstein
Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by
the free market but by government interference in the economy.
Ludwig von Mises
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes
vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous
effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.
P.J. O'Rourke
The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws
reduce the supply of professional services
The poor are the net
losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been
reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information research
costs of the rich. S. David Young
People who create things nowadays can expect to be
prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating
anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on
innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and
prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how
many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.
Joseph Sobran May 13, 1998 (commenting on US vs. Microsoft)
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by
increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place:
legal plunder. Frιdιric Bastiat
Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far
as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we
understand what government spending is. Since government has no
resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing
Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to
recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation
of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not
belong in effect, legalized theft. Walter Williams
Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to
please one's fellow man
that's what competition is all about:
"out-pleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers. Walter
Williams
Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described
itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public
servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary
policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental
institution is as likely as a barking cat. Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous
power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from
the citizens. Ludwig von Mises
A [tax loophole is] something that benefits the other
guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform. Russell B. Long
There's another major hurdle to a new year of
prosperity: our tax code. No human being understands it. The current
code, which runs over 8,000 pages and countless thousands more pages
of IRS rulings and interpretations, is beyond redemption...
Incalculable amounts of the nation's intellectual brainpower are
devoted to the dead-end task of coping with the current tax code.
Over one-half million people in the U.S. make their living off it,
whether in lobbying, lawyering, tax preparing, or accounting.
Americans spend five and one-half billion hours a year filling out
tax forms
and spend between $100 billion and $300 billion to
comply with the current code. Malcolm S. Forbes
In increasing numbers, Americans believe that it is
the responsibility nay, the duty of the federal government to
take the earnings of some Americans and redistribute them to other
Americans for various and sundry "good" reasons including
"fairness." Citizens who know it is wrong to use force to take money
from a neighbor have rationalized that it is OK for the government
to do it for them. Linda Bowles, nationally syndicated columnist
Once upon a time, government budgets were balanced,
our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all
levels of government took less than 10% of our income. Harry
Browne
By the year 2012, projected outlays for entitlements
and interest on the national debt will consume all tax revenues
collected by the federal government
There will not be one cent
left over for education, children's programs, highways, national
defense, or any other discretionary program. Bipartisan U.S.
Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform
Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they
want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the
government what they want and their kids pay for it. Richard Lamm,
former Gov of Colorado
A government debt is a government claim against
personal income and private property an unpaid tax bill. Hans F.
Sennholz, Debts & Deficits
The Social Security system did not begin as an attempt
to sabotage people's ability to plan for retirement, but it has
worked out that way. The politicians who originally planned the
system probably had no idea how it would turn out. But today's
politicians know the system is rotted, and yet they refuse to make
the changes necessary to free the American people from it. Instead,
they make it worse. Ed Clark 1980 Libertarian Party presidential
candidate, A New Beginning
The one with the primary responsibility to the
individual's future is that individual. Dorcas Hardy, Director,
Social Security System
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice;
I consider the real vice is making losses. Winston Churchill
It is well enough that people of the nation do not
understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I
believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Henry
Ford
The standard of living of the common man is higher in
those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy
entrepreneurs. Ludwig von Mises
Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace
in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the
recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens
of millions of votes in any presidential election. Joseph Sobran
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his
money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may
appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it
for you. William E. Simon
Taxation with representation ain't so hot either.
Gerald Barzan
We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our
own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we
have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money. David
Crockett, Congressman 1827-35
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
P.J. O'Rourke
Politics is the art of obtaining money from the rich
and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the
other. Anonymous
The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government
rewards it. Harry Browne
Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer
the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor
socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have
not learned the tune. Milton Friedman
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world.
First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some
of it back to them flamboyantly. Thomas Sowell
If politicians were serious about day care for
children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could
do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the
heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both
parents working. Thomas Sowell
The economic miracle that has been the United States
was not produced by socialized enterprises, by
government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic
planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a
profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in
weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let
government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation
and decline. Milton Friedman
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for
political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another
without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over
which political power is exercised. Milton Friedman
The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was
produced by government mismanagement [of money]. It was not produced
by the failure of private enterprise. Milton Friedman
Consider Social Security. The young have always
contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped
their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now
contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of
compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds
of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds. Milton
Friedman
The fact throughout history is that whenever
government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free
society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues.
Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute
contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other. William E.
Simon
Throughout forty centuries of human experience, price
controls at their best have always been a miserable failure. At
their worst, they have led to famine and bloodshed to defeat and
to disaster. Irving S. Olds
Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on
welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have
made this country a nice place to live not even for the poor on
welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they
were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a
liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of
unanticipated and perverse consequences. Irving Kristol
The essential quality of a free economy is that it
cannot be planned. It leaves the solution of problems to the
inspiration of the individuals in the untrammeled population. When
something approaching a free economy has existed, it has always
worked better than the schemes of any planners. Thomas H. Barber
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
Robert Heinlein
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing. It was here first. Mark Twain
A traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise
and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than
socialism can build roads and road capacity. Andrew Galambos
According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume
more than 38% of the average family's budget. That is more than is
spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined.
Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give
the lord of the manor one-third of their output -- and they were
considered slaves. So what does that make us? Daniel Mitchell, The
Washington Times, 3/9/99
He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the
gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first
stone upon the materialism of the economists. Ludwig von Mises
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is
like asking six-year-olds where babies come from. Thomas Sowell
The whole of economics can be reduced to a single
lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art
of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the
longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the
consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all
groups. Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson
The average American family head will be forced to do
twenty years' labor to pay taxes in his or her lifetime. James
Bovard, Lost Rights
It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's $100, vote for
me." So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form
of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food
Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs
programs. Don Farrar
Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every
dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as
a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as
a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet
Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was
the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen. Ayn Rand
All the fiery rhetoric of the Founders was directed at
a "tyrant" who taxed his subjects at a rate of about three percent.
Today, we in "the land of the free" are taxed at about 50 percent
when you add federal, state, and local taxes. What kind of
government would do this? A dictatorship would. Doug Newman
We don't have a budget crisis. We have a spending
crisis. Jonathan Hill, Citizens for a Sound Economy
If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any
band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and
all their robberies are legalized. Lysander Spooner
If you feel driven to feed the poor, get your
checkbook out and keep your tyrannical mouth shut about it. Lew
Goldberg
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a
lack of belief in freedom itself. Milton Friedman
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and
subsidizes non-work. Milton Friedman
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to
indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the
appropriation of public funds
I find no warrant for such an
appropriation in the Constitution. Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th
US President
It is easy to be conspicuously "compassionate" if
others are being forced to pay the cost. Murray N. Rothbard
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives
prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price
competition, usually by governmental activity. Thomas Sowell
All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers,
all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure
what the income tax law says. Walter B. Wriston
An inevitable consequence of socialism is the division
of society into two groups: those who are consuming government
"services" and those who are paying for them. Lee Robinson
It is much cheaper and enormously more profitable for
the special interests to purchase the regulatory favors of
Washington's political harlots than to compete in a fair,
unsubsidized marketplace. Lee Robinson
Expecting the government to fight the deficit is like
expecting the Mafia to fight crime. Anonymous
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits.
Anonymous
We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless
we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this,
that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must
repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. Frank Chodorov
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