“Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clear air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.”

— John W. Gardner

The Recovery of Confidence (1970), p. 152.

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John W. Gardner 8

American politician 1912–2002

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“Overconsumption by US citizens, US buy-outs of foreign companies and dollars the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These governments face a hard choice: either recycle the dollars back to America by buying US Treasury bonds or let the “free market” force up their currencies relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets, creating domestic unemployment and business failures. US-style free markets hook them into a system that forces them to accept unlimited dollars. Now they want out. … The US is the world’s largest debtor, yet has avoided the pain of “structural adjustments” imposed on other debtor nations. US interest rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programmes that Washington has forced on other countries via the International Monetary Fund and other vehicles.”

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“I'm getting ready to buy a company that makes 250 to 280 thousand dollars a year. Your new tax plan's going to tax me more, isn't it?”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

A question presented to US Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama as he campaigned in Wurzelbacher's neighborhood. (12 October 2008) Obama responded in part:
My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off [...] if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody. - (Full, unedited video of the conversation between Wurzelbacher and Obama) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a4_1224166209
This response became a major focus of the presidential campaign of John McCain during the third and final presidential debates between him and Obama, on 15 October 2008, and in later campaign ads which compared Obama's comments on his tax plan to an embrace of socialism.

“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”

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“The one that's easy to say now is, "I Support The Troops". Doesn't cost ya anything. But I've got a question for you: can you really support the troops if you also support these massive tax cuts for the very rich? Because the people we say are our heroes are paid by tax dollars. And we hear about, teachers have to buy their own school supplies, soldiers in this country are on food stamps…couldn't somebody in congress stand up and say, "Why don't we take half of that big tax cut and give it to our heroes?"”

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Or is that why they're our heroes, because they work cheap?
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“The political, the economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we have to become involved in a program of re-education to educate our people into the importance of knowing that when you spend your dollar out of the community in which you live, the community in which you spend your money becomes richer and richer; the community out of which you take your money becomes poorer and poorer.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

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“The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

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“The aim of our efficiency has not been to produce goods, but to harvest dollars… The production of goods was always secondary to the securing of dollars.”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

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“My argument is keeping taxes low will encourage the private sector to create jobs.”

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“Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime.”

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“First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

[2009-07-30, Mr. President, what's the rush?, USA Today, 7A, http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090730/column30_st.art.htm]
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