Wealth Erosion Quotes

The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.

Inflation is the parent of unemployment and the unseen robber of those who have saved.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear.

My great-great-grandfather, who made his money in the jute trade, had at one time 600 houses in London, and within three generations, the money was gone.

Inflation is not a Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor. Rather, it deals most cruelly with those who can least protect themselves. It strikes hardest those millions of our citizens whose incomes do not quickly rise with the cost of living. When prices soar, the pensioner and the widow see their security undermined, the man of thrift sees his savings melt away; the white collar worker, the minister, and the teacher see their standards of living dragged down.

Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.

The American people have no idea they are paying the bill. They know that someone is stealing their hubcaps, but they think it is the greedy businessman who raises prices or the selfish laborer who demands higher wages or the unworthy farmer who demands too much for his crop or the wealthy foreigner who bids up our prices. They do not realize that these groups also are victimized by a monetary system which is constantly being eroded in value by and through the Federal Reserve System.

The road system that we've come to depend on, the road system that we built our wealth on and our power on, is falling apart.

You could be worth $2 billion today and a half a billion tomorrow. It doesn't take much for this to disappear overnight.

Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.

It's just wrong to work your whole life to build up a nest egg, build your own business - you pass away, and Uncle Sam can swoop in and take away nearly half of everything you've earned. Can you imagine that? Having to sell off most of your land just to keep it from the government, just to save the house.

Your money can be inflated away but your knowledge and talent cannot.