Will Rogers Quotes
Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.
Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams, Volume 3: The Hoover Years, 1929-1933. Edited by James M. Smallwood, Oklahoma State University Press, 1979.
This became known as the Buffet Principle—that the very rich should not pay a lower tax rate than the workers who make far less money than they do. President Barack Obama used this principle by name in calling for the 2011 Jobs Act which would eliminate some of the loopholes and exemptions by which the rich could avoid some or much or their tax obligation.
whether or not to buy luxuries This quotation and {639885} together illustrate why it is so difficult to classify historical politicians in the left-right categories of a future time. Here Gogel seems a strong liberal arguing for progressive taxation and luxury taxes, and tax relief for the poop, while in {639885} he sounds like a 21st century extreme conservative.
As a result of years of lobbying many vested interests were getting tax exemptions for their activities. Some of the richest corporations and people paid little or no taxes. This was like the old European monarchies where the dukes and nobles got tax exemptions from the king and the middle class and poor people paid a much larger percentage of their income and wealth than did the nobility. Fairness in taxation is very difficult in practice. See {633629}
At the time, he, th richest man in America was paying a lower ta rate than his secretary, his employees and the waiter who served him lunch. The “Buffet Rule” was developed and named for him that said that wealthy people should pay a minimum rate of taxation regardless of tax credits, deductions and other means of tax avoidance.
He was one of the richest men in America, who thought that the tax burden on the very wealthy was too low given the needs of the nation and the ability of the wealty to pay..
William Penn Adair Rogers was an American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.
