William Graham Sumner Quotes

Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do - redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God.

You have to be very rich to afford Labour, with 66 tax rises since they came in power.

If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it's because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people's freedom.

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

Raising taxes doesn't create jobs, and this is a common sense thing. Washington doesn't get it. They believe if they take more money and send it to Washington, D.C. somehow they create wealth. It doesn't work.

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks.

You can't have a capitalist system and tax capital to death.

I'm offended by any suggestion that we have to beat groups of people over the head with an economic club [higher taxes] to keep them from exercising their freedom of choice in the marketplace.

Each dollar taxed and spent deprives Americans of the freedom to make their own choices.

The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens -- usually cash -- and keep it for itself.

The only way Congress can get one dollar to spend is to take that one dollar from Americans, borrow that one dollar from Americans, or inflate that one dollar from Americans. So, it's very much like the visual image of a swimming pool. A person notes there is a shallow end, so he takes the water out of the deep end and pours it in the shallow end, hoping to raise the height of the water in the pool - and you would call that person stupid.

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem. […] Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. 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. If it stops moving, subsidize it. […] The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of 'helping the poor' has the long-run effect of doing the opposite.

The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone.

There is a difference between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. Senator Obama believes that the government ought to be able to take as much as it thinks it needs from anybody.

Are you entitled to the fruits of your own labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?

When any welfare scheme is being proposed, its political sponsors always dwell on what a generous and compassionate government should pay to Paul; they neglect to mention that this additional money must be seized from Peter.

Margaret Thatcher said,you know the problem with socialism is that eventually it will run out of other people's money. And she was absolutely right.

Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all - to different degrees - unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual's effort and reward for that effort.

Government is just spending too much money.

Every dollar I can't commit to my company that's paid in taxes is paying a government that I believe is too big and doing way too much that I don't want done.

Big government doesn't help the middle class, it buries it.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.