Quotes about Unearned Income

Mikhail Bakunin

We see that the richest property owners ... are precisely those who work the least or who do not work at all.

Adam Smith

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

Pliny the Elder

The invention of money opened a new field to human avarice by giving rise to usury and the practice of lending money at interest while the owner passes a life of idleness.

Mark Twain

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety-and -nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stock snuggles into your heart in the same way.

Richard Thaler

The wealth in many large estates has never been taxed because it is largely in the form of unrealized - therefore untaxed - capital gains.

Edward Abbey

Wealth should come like manna from heaven, unearned and uncalled for. Money should be like grace -- a gift. It is not worth sweating and scheming for.

John Sherman

Here we have in New York Mr. Aster with an income of millions derived from real estate, … and we have along side of him a poor man receiving $1000 a year. What is the discrimination of the law in that case? It is altogether against the poor man—Everything that he consumes we tax, and yet we are afraid to tax the income of Mr. Astor. Is there any justice to it? Why, sir, the income tax is the only one that tends to equalize the burdens between rich and poor.

An income tax had been instituted during the Civil War but had lapsed. Existing taxes were all excise or head taxes—very regressive. Later there was a political movement to bring back the income tax with the intention of taxing all income equally. There was a titanic struggle which culminated in a Constitutional Amendment allowing the income tax. None of the original politicians, for or against, the income tax could never imagine an income tax that would charge lower rates for investment income. That was the entire purpose of the income tax at the beginning—to tax investment (unearned) income. The “capital gains tax” was the creative way of the rich getting back some of what they thought the lost when the income tax was instituted.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The proprietor [land owner], producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief.

Marty Robbins

I'm in this business because I despise honest labor.

Rainer Weiss

Receiving money for something that was a pleasure to begin with is a little outrageous.

Henry Ward Beecher

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

Steven Rattner

During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on 'unearned income' have bounced up and down with regularity, and I've never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists.

Tony Bennett

I've never worked a day in my life.

Niccolo Machiavelli

…those are called gentlemen who live idly in abundance from the returns of their possessions without having any care either for cultivation or for other necessary trouble in living. Such are pernicious in every republic and in every province, but more pernicious are those who, beyond the aforesaid fortunes, command from a castle and have subjects to obey them.

Margaret Atwood

Things might have been different if she hadn't been able to drift; if she'd had to concentrate on her next meal, instead of dwelling on all the injuries she felt we'd done her. An unearned income encourages self-pity in those already prone to it.

Henry David Thoreau

The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

Dennis Prager

I believe that free money is as addictive as cocaine

Wayne Static

I wish someone would give me some money for doing nothing.

John Stuart Mill

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.

Robert Higgs

Transfer payments discourage the recipients from earning income in the present and from investing in their potential to earn income in the future. People respond to a reduced cost of idleness by choosing to be idle more often.

Mo Ibrahim

Tony Blair is paid $500,000 for one speech, and no one asks how he is going to spend it.

Alex Pareene

Cory Booker became a millionaire because this is how the economy works for people of his class: Rich people give other rich people money to do nothing, simply because they 'deserve' it.

Brent Spiner

[Voice acting] is such an easy job. It's like stealing money, really. Which I'm always happy to do.

Todd Rundgren

I wonder how many eggs are in the golden goose?

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Speculative income should not be favored over earned income.

The debate over whether taxes that paid on stock market and other investment profits should be at the same rate as taxes paid on salaries or other earned income has been going on for many years. It usually plays out in an argument that capital gains taxes should be at a lower rate than regular income taxes. Policy on this issue has gone back and forth.

Unearned Income Quotes