“You could say that GDP (National Income) and prosperity and wealth grows fastest when income tax rates are highest. And wealth slows, the economy slows, when taxes are cut. That's counter intuitive but if you look at any chart comparing tax rates and economic growth rates that's what you find. The 19th century knew it, the 18th century knew it but today you have a kind of counter revolution of junk economics that is basically anti-labor economics.”

— Michael Hudson (economist)

"Higher Taxes on Top 1% Equals Higher Productivity", Video Interview (13:28), The Real News Network (TRNN) http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6000 (January 1, 2011)

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Michael Hudson (economist) 13

American economist 1939

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“One of the hackneyed liberal complaints goes something like this: 'Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war.' Nonsense. Bush didn’t cut taxes; he cut tax rates across the board - on income, dividends and capital gains. And that’s precisely why tax revenues have soared. When a department store wants to make more money, it doesn’t raise its prices, it cuts them and announces a big sale. If you want more work and investment, you hold a sale on economic activity by cutting tax rates, thereby reducing the cost of productive activity and increasing the prospect of after-tax returns on work and investment.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

July 22, 2005 Rocky Mountain News column

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget…. As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: "Radio and Television Address to the Nation on the Test Ban Treaty and the Tax Reduction Bill" (18 September 1963) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9413

“We should consider lowering our income tax rates to equal Hongkong or Vietnam or Thailand. One of the major reasons why many locators do not like the Philippines is because they would have to pay their executives more takeout to equalize take home pay. For example, Hongkong has a tax rate of 17% while our marginal income tax rate is 32%.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions, and any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

“You can be assured of this. There will be no increase in the standard or other rates of income tax under the Labour Government so long as normal peacetime conditions continue.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Speech in Newcastle (28 September 1959) during the general election campaign, quoted in The Times (29 September 1959), p. 10
Leader of the Labour Party

“In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)

“One of these is an increasing awareness of the benefits to our economy, particularly in terms of investment and enterprise, both local and from overseas, of not having the inquisitorial type of tax system inevitably associated with a full income tax. Another is that even I, who have always believed in the vigour of our economy under our present tax regime, have been surprised by the growth of revenue generated at our present tax rates.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 29, 1967, page 248.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“…this Budget represents a continuation of the policies which we have pursued consistently for nearly nine years, and which we will continue to pursue—a continuation of the steps that we have taken in nine previous Budgets, and of the major reforms that we have introduced in other fields, too, all of them designed to encourage and reward enterprise and so to liberate the energies of the British people. The tax changes in this Budget consolidate Britain's move from a high-tax country to a low-tax country, at all levels. Since 1979, the top rate of income tax has been cut from 83 per cent. to 40 per cent. The basic rate has been cut from 33 per cent. to 25 per cent. The corporation tax rate has been cut from 52 per cent. to 35 per cent. The small companies' rate has been cut from 42 per cent. to 25 per cent., and the 15 per cent. additional tax on savings income has been abolished altogether.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/mar/21/budget-resolutions-and-economic-situation in the House of Commons (21 March 1988)

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”

Ha-Joon Chang book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Source: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“Any tax rate is actually overtaxation.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

19:54–19:56.
"WWE Wrestler Kane Talks Libertarianism, and His Heroes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqUIwu8nuc (2013)

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Michael Hudson (economist) 13

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