A Quote by Thomas Jefferson
The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
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The United States has already passed on as the world's economic leader. Having flouted Thomas Jefferson for too long, America has succumbed to public debt, the 'fore horse for oppression and despotism,' after which 'taxation will follow, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.'
There's an argument that private debt, in some way, is creating indentured servants in our country. But public debt does not do that. In fact, public debt does the exact opposite - it relieves private debt.
I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.
Contrary to any claim of a systematically “neutral” effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence.
Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.
In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of un-tethered government debt. I choose the words -“frightful storm' - deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are working right now so hard to correct.
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.
Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another. It's happened in the USA between white working class and poor folks on the one hand, and people of color on the other.
Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.
Some guys make their careers off one horse; kind of a trick horse, a wonder horse. I'm not knocking that, but for me I'm trying to get better and study. That means taking out new horses. It's a life study. When I've finished a horse, I turn him out and basically stop riding him, except taking him to the occasional branding so I can enjoy him.
I have to continue to be a great leader and contribute in any way that I can, and get guys to follow suit. That's how you turn a team around.
Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
America has had to turn to foreigners to finance its debt - not surprising since household saving in the last years has plummeted to zero. China is one of the largest holders of American debt.
Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.
But I'm not an Atlanta Falcons fan. Nobody is. Sure, the team has its followers, its adherents, in Atlanta. But they don't follow the team the way fans from other teams follow their teams - the way, say, fans of the New Orleans Saints follow the Saints.
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