L. Neil Smith Quotes

America's political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas - beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity.

President Lyndon Johnson's administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama's will become notable for his War on Prosperity. We're speaking, of course, of Obama's plans to hike income taxes on the most wealthy 2 or 3 percent of the nation. He's not just raising the top rate to 39.6 percent; he's also disallowing about one-third of top earner's deductions, whether for state and local taxes, charitable contributions or mortgage interest. This is an effective hike in their taxes by an average of about 20 percent.

My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.

The rich people are those who create wealth, and you have to treat them well so they continue to give wealth.

On GOP Tax Cuts: They'll take food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.

I think it's terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor.

What the Democrats do with income inequality is punish the people at the top of whatever bracket we're talking about. If it's income, they want to raise taxes. They want to impugn, punish, institute more regulations, just make it tougher and tougher and do what they can to take money from them.

I actually think the border tax - the concept of border tax is more of a trade issue than it is a - so when we talk about income coming in, I believe border tax in its form, if we use that, reciprocal tax is a tax that I really love because basically nobody can fight it.

Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

Countries, therefore, when lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure; expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are assessed in a way to prevent that.

Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies.

I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes.

Income tax in particular in the United States is concentrated on the top half of the income distribution, and very heavily skewed towards the top 10 or even top 1 percent.

If a group of people - leaders - can convince a group of folk who barely have a pot to piss in that the rich shouldn't be taxed-- THAT is leadership!

Trickle-down did not work. It got us into the mess we were in, in 2008 and 2009. Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn’t worked. And a lot of really smart, wealthy people know that. And they are saying, hey, we need to do more to make the contributions we should be making to rebuild the middle class.

You can't look at the tax cut on a family until you realized how - how much better off they're going to be in a growing economy.

I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence... I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich.

They are having quite an argument over Treasury Secretary Mellon's Tax Bill. Mr. Mellon wants to cut the surtax on the rich, and leave it as is on the poor, as there is more poor than rich. I suppose the majority will win.

Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party... the poor and middle class.

We simply cannot afford to give the reigns of government so someone who will double down on trickle down

Any allegation of runaway capitalism has to be tempered by the observation that today we have the largest public sectors and the highest taxes the world has ever known.

Now it is unambiguously clear that trickle-down economics does not work. But what does that mean? That means we have to structure our economic policies to make sure that we have shared prosperity. And you don't do that by giving a tax cut to the big winners and raising taxes on those who have not done very well. Your economic policy has to respond to the way our economic system has been working.

Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is-I'm not sure 80 percent of the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the president.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending

When people ask, "Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?" - my answer is not an answer most people get: It's because their power developed from laws that enriched them.