Paul Krugman Quotes

If you increase the sales tax... everybody would be taxed.

The bottom line is more tax money is going to be needed. Just how much will be the primary issue on the agenda when Congressional leaders meet with the President later today, Wednesday, May the 9th, 1990. And good morning, welcome to Today. It’s a Wednesday morning, a day when the budget picture, frankly, seems gloomier than ever. It now seems the time has come to pay the fiddler for our costly dance of the Reagan years.

We have to deal with two issues. Spending and taxes.

It is time to recognize a simple fact of life. Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves.

What you really want to do is sit down and find a place that you can control government spending and raise more revenue.

If we increase spending, we have got to raise taxes or any combination.

My biggest objection to raising taxes is that it feeds the government addiction to spending money.

The best legislator is the one who votes for all appropriations and against all taxes.

There's a lot of evidence you can sell people on tax increases if they think its an investment.

The country needs a gas tax.... That's good for the country.... What's good for the country is good for Chrysler.

There are other ways of raising money other than the income tax….We got along pretty well without it for many years.

The delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people.

it would be nice to have low taxes, but we have to pay our bills in this country.

A tax code becomes an instrument of social policy.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes.

Taxes are an important tool for us together with infrastructure investments, research, and development to create more jobs.

The role of government is to tax the people to the least extent possible while still taxing them enough to cover the basic needs for government.

I don't rule out raising some taxes into the future.

If our elected representatives want to further increase the gas tax, they should have to take a vote each time they do.

In reality, finding a way to raise taxes may well be the central political problem facing the United States.

[Government's] great contribution to human wisdom...is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Americans tend not to be too enthusiastic about having their taxes raised again....But if the American people aren't going to accept it, if the politicians don't have the courage to raise taxes, what are we facing down the road?

I support the Ryan budget plan. I think it’s the right direction on the major points. I can’t say I’ve read all of it, but on the major thrust of what he’s doing, I support what he wants to do with Medicare, Medicaid. The only thing I would do, frankly, as I’ve said publicly many times, I think we should implement a lot of these things sooner than what he’s suggesting.

We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.