I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits. But they’re learned to do more with less, and so they don’t hire.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

A little over 5% of the world’s population produces almost 29% of the world’s goods and services.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.

During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school.

Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

And what’s interesting, and I don’t think a lot of Americans understand this fact, is that, one, most new jobs are created by small businesses; two, most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax, or many small businesses pay tax there.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

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, subsidize it.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

The problem with being an employee or self-employed is you pay the highest taxes.

We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

This 90/10 rule holds true in almost anything financial. Take the game of golf, for example. Ten percent of the professional golfers make 90 percent of the money.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

The biggest and most deadly ‚tax‘ rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits – food stamps, housing subsidies and the like – if their income goes up.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

For me the greatest source of income is still movies. Nothing – stocks, financial speculation, real estate speculation or businesses – makes more money for me than making movies.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

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.

Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?

I think my top salary was maybe in 1966. I made $17,000 and 11 of that came from selling other players‘ equipment.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

We can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.

I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

Now, anybody who thinks that we can move this economy forward with just a few folks at the top doing well, hoping that it’s going to trickle down to working people who are running faster and faster just to keep up, you’ll never see it.

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

The real minimum wage is zero.

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our stereotypes of age, education, language and income.

There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive.