A Quote by Milton Friedman
Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the
chief sources of danger....Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy.
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Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that and the other thing.
The 9-9-9 plan would resuscitate this economy because it replaces the outdated tax code that allows politicians to pick winners and losers, and to provide favors in the form of tax breaks, special exemptions and loopholes. It simplifies the code dramatically: 9% business flat tax, 9% personal flat tax, 9% sales tax.
Competition is the hallmark of a free enterprise economy. For the past thirty years, however, corporate America has been doing everything it can to cut competition, with major corporations merging and consolidating at every opportunity.
I think, again, the overall intellectual structure of the speech is very much consistent with what Donald Trump has been saying on the campaign trail. He's against free trade. He's against immigration. But he has been in favor of tax reform, and he has been afraid of - in favor of developing American energy sources like through fracking or hydraulic fracturing.
We need to lower tax rates for everybody, starting with the top corporate tax rate. We need to simplify the tax code. The ultimate answer, in my opinion, is the fair tax, which is a fair tax for everybody, because as long as we still have this messed-up tax code, the politicians are going to use it to reward winners and losers.
There are five different ways you can do it. You can do it through not giving them the subsidy that we pay them. You know, we pay Mexico a subsidy. I don't know if you know. But the whole thing is ridiculous. We're paying everybody subsidy. We actually have a small portion of China where they get a subsidy from us because they haven't ended it for years.
We very much hope that as we get growth that we can reduce the burden of taxation, that we can reduce income tax and increase the amount of genuine free enterprise and business enterprise... This is going... toward the restoration of the personal responsibility, the independence, with every man a property owner, every man a capitalist.
Everyone asks for freedom for himself,
The man free love, the businessman free trade,
The writer and talker free speech and free press.
The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.
Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician. He actually built a business. Those tax returns that were - that came out publicly this week show that he faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago. But like virtually every other business, including the New York Times not too long ago, he used what's called net operating loss. We have a tax code that actually is designed to encourage entrepreneurship in this country.
Everyone talks about freedom. All around the world different people, different races, different countries are fighting for freedom. But what is freedom? In America we speak of living in a free country. But are we really free? Are we free to be who we really are? The answer is no, we are not free. True freedom has to do with the human spirit-it is freedom to be who we really are. Who stops us from being free? We blame the government, we blame the weather, we blame our parents, we blame religion, we blame God. Who really stops us from being free? We stop ourselves.
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
Fighting for free enterprise means standing up for free markets. The freedom to succeed includes the freedom to fail. We must defend entrepreneurial capitalism against the onslaught of the American Left.
Our code is different from the warrior code. It reaches across boundaries. To us, every cat is simply that — a cat, with the same right to life as any other. We made a promise to heal and protect, remember?
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