Ed Asner Quotes

My message to David Cameron, as the head of our government, is to seriously think again about this Robin Hood tax, the tax to help the poor by taking a little bit from the rich.

People like me, whose income largely comes from dividends, should pay more taxes.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady.

The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they're contributing as much to the nation's well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes.

It's really a question of fairness and what kind of country we're going to live in. There are 22,000 people making over $1 million. They're paying an effective tax rate in the teens. As Warren Buffett said, he pays less in taxes effectively than his secretary does. That's not right.

You know what isn't class warfare? Progressive taxation, as in, say, expecting billionaires to pay at least as much in taxes as their secretaries. Ideally, in fact, they should pay more.

I agreed with everything he was saying when he ran for president. I was listening to what he said. I go, this guy thinks like me and I agree with him. Now he's changing. All he keeps saying is millionaires and billionaires don't pay their fair share of taxes.

When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money.

In our rush to soak the rich make sure we don't drown the middle class.

I’m not looking for opportunity to pay more taxes. But I do support progressive tax structure. If society has been exceptionally good to you, then it’s incumbent on you to make a larger contribution to the welfare of society.

So long as there is an income to be found in the country so large that it yields to its possessor a surplus over and above what he needs for the comfort or even luxuries of life for himself and his family, I am in favor of taking such portion of the surplus income by taxation as the Government needs for war purposes, and if it needs it all I am in favor of taking it all before we take one penny from the slender income of a man who receives only enough to provide himself and family with the bare necessities of life.

While lawmakers should eschew soaking the rich, that is no excuse for soaking the poor.

Here we have in New York Mr. Aster with an income of millions derived from real estate, … and we have along side of him a poor man receiving $1000 a year. What is the discrimination of the law in that case? It is altogether against the poor man—Everything that he consumes we tax, and yet we are afraid to tax the income of Mr. Astor. Is there any justice to it? Why, sir, the income tax is the only one that tends to equalize the burdens between rich and poor.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

The 400 of us [the richest Americans] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.

It cannot be said that we dislike paying taxes for the welfare of those less well off than we are, so we develop a draping cover of economic and social theory.

The wealthiest can afford to pay more in taxes. That's a part of the deal. That makes sense. I don't know anyone that doesn't agree with that.

Income splitting benefits only fifteen per cent, mostly the wealthiest Canadians, but it's paid for by everyone.

Governments should end the extreme concentration of wealth in order to end poverty. This means tackling tax dodging but also increasing taxes on wealth and high incomes to ensure a more level playing field and generate the billions of dollars needed to invest in healthcare, education, and job creation.

I am part of the 1 percent of the 1 percent. By that, I mean that I am fortunate to be a wealthy American, and I say, 'It's okay to raise my taxes.'

I used to say the wealthiest among us have to pay our fair share, which I still occasionally say. That's not dodging the word 'millionaire.'

It does not help the vast majority of Americans, but it does really well for people already at the top. Well, we're going to turn that upside down. We're going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes for a change.

We have to say to the billionaire class, enough is enough. You cannot have it all. You are going to pay more in taxes.

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.