Quotes About Government

La magia no es respetable, caballero. No es... —buscó la palabra— seria. El gobierno no puede involucrarse en esas cosas.

In 2001, the U.S. government paid a record $4 billion in subsidies to cotton growers, a cost that exceeded the market value of the crop by 30 percent. To put it another way, these subsidies amounted to triple that year's USAID payments to all of Africa, a part of the world where production costs for cotton were only about a third of what they were in the United States. In

47% problem—that is, the significant number of people who don't pay income tax.

A consumption tax like the VAT is paid by everybody, including those who pay no income tax and those who are in the country illegally.

Recently, there has been considerable public concern about the fact that 47% of Americans pay no income tax; the presidential candidate Mitt Romney opined that these are people "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. . . . These are people who pay no income tax.

BBLR means that if the tax base—that is, the total amount of income, or sales, or property that can be taxed—is kept as large as possible, then the tax rate—that is, the percentage that people have to give to the government—can be kept low. Virtually all economists and tax experts agree that this is the best way to run a tax regime.

The American sage Will Rogers captured this concept precisely. Of course people like low taxes, Rogers said, but there's something even more important: "People want JUST taxes, more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.

The big gorilla of homeowner tax breaks is the deduction for mortgage interest, which reduces income tax revenues by about $100 billion each year. That is, this one tax deduction costs more than the budgets of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, the Interior, and the Treasury combined.

Only the richest smidgen of the population had to file a return, and even for them the top tax rate was just 7%.

anybody buying a qualified plug-in electric car—the list of approved vehicles includes sleek, sporty cars like the $105,000 Tesla Model S P85D and the $138,000 BMW i8—can subtract up to $7,500 from the income tax he or she owes Uncle Sam.

The notion that government has to create a mechanism to provide medical care for all who are sick was born in the late 19th century in the very heart of Europe, in a newly created nation called German. - pg 55

In the 1960s, the corporate tax brought in about 33% of U.S. tax revenues. Today, the same tax provides less than 9% of revenues; that means individual taxpayers have to take up the slack and pay more.

It's classic: Congress decides to reduce the complexity of our tax code by making it even more complex.

By the mid-1980s, the tax code allowed depletion or depreciation allowances that cut taxes for cement companies, Christmas tree farms, apple orchards, gravel pits, railroad cars, rubber importers, cattle growers, and many, many more. There was even a depreciation allowance for human beings; professional sports teams were allowed to write off their players as "depreciable assets" as they slowed down with age.

What had been the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 became the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, which it still is today.

Most of them ran counter to the ethos of BBLR. Virtually all of them made the tax code more complicated—including that bizarre "anti-complexity clause," Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX). Three decades after the passage of the 1986 reforms, the U.S. tax code is a mockery of the BBLR principle.

IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, a voluminous and hugely complex new law, which included the laughable "anti-complexity clause"—that is, Section 7803(c)(2)(B)(ii)(IX).

the number one most serious problem facing American taxpayers. That problem is the complexity of the tax code.

I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation.

For a government,' said the god, 'is nothing but a mirror of your minds--tyrannical for tyrants--hypocritical for hypocrites --corrupt for those who are indifferent--extravagant and wasteful for the selfish--strong and honorable only toward honest men.

director under George H. W. Bush

Even now, years later, it's hard to tell why the government stood by and let the city of New Orleans be destroyed, dispatching troops rather than help.

If the U.S. government is going to collapse anyway, it behooves us to first replace it with something that can stand in its place. Unless we act, we'll have to deal with a post-collapse scenario, in which we'll have to fend off roving criminal gangs, hoodlums, predatory corporations, oppressive residual government entities, and an emboldened political right.

We need rules that limit our leaders' powers more than we need rules that limit our rights.