John Maynard Keynes Quotes

You don't get an economy growing by raising taxes.

The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt… Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.

If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

I'm a conservative and I believe if you tax something more you get less of it.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

In the current law we're seeing Social Security dwindle. And so what we're saying is if we're going to reduce taxes we just want to make sure that there are things within the law that pay for it.

The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised.

We had 90 percent taxes before in America. All right? Didn't work.

When we leave money in the hands of taxpayers, they buy things, they pay taxes, they grow government.

The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.

Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.

Taxes grow without rain.

Anybody can balance a budget if they raise taxes.

It seems difficult to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean high revenue for the government, and that more revenue may often be obtained with lower tax rates.

If every country tries to race towards the lowest [tax] rate, then in the end nobody gains. If you believe there should be no government at all, then fine. But if you believe some government is good, then you cannot have a system that erodes the tax base in all major countries.

I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me to illustrate the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues.

If you raise taxes on something, you discourage that activity.

Putting, say, an 85 per cent income tax rate is unlikely to bring in much revenue.

Raise the taxes, and we find less money in our pockets. Lower the taxes, and we've got more money in those pockets, and we spend it on all kinds of things.

The sales tax is a necessary source of revenue to pay for Japan's social welfare.

You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?

States with high and rising tax burdens are more likely to suffer economic decline; those with low and falling tax burdens are more likely to enjoy strong economic growth.