Nicholas Negroponte Quotes
Taxes will eventually become a voluntary process, with the possible exception of real estate - the one physical thing that does not move easily and has computable value. The US has a jump-start on the practice, in that 65 percent of local school funds come from real estate taxes - a practice Europeans consider odd and ill advised. But wait until that's all there is left to tax, when the rest of the things we buy and sell come from everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere.
Negroponte, Nicholas. "Bit by Bit, Taxes Must Go." Wired, vol. 5, no. 12, Dec. 1997.
This law established a fundamental principle that allowed capital to be invested in new and needy territories without running the risk of the locals discriminating against businesses or establishments owned by strangers. Many states and communities still find ways to favor local businesses but not be discriminatory taxation.
This, along with most of Sinclair’s ideas, although called socialist and radical by the conservatives of the time, were adopted later. This illustrates that losing candidates and their programs can have a very profound effect on public policy
Many corporate executives were claiming that they were not investing in growth and jobs because they were uncertain about the future tax rates or regulatory environment with which they would be coping. But with elections coming up, there has never been such certainty, and much of the best growth in American business was in the Clinton administration where these policies were under constant debate. Immelt identified the real problem: Demand for products and services was very weak.
This early cry for a graduated income tax interestingly coupled it with a reduction of corporate taxes. The former became a major plank of the Democratic Party, and the latter of the Republicans. In America, third minor parties, even though they do not win elections sometimes do influence the political scene by putting ideas on the national agenda.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
From the earliest days of the nation a very few people have left the country for reasons which range from seeking more economic freedom (less or no taxes or regulation) or personal liberty (being drafted for a war to which they disapproved and didn’t want to fight in or escaping government invading their privacy). However, while there are countries which on one or two issues may be to some people’s thinking better than the United States, a tiny few have left America while millions pour in—legally and illegally—to have what the overwhelming number of people in the world is one of the greatest places to live in the history of the world. See Cambell’s counter to Norquist: {634644}.
Nicholas Negroponte is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte is the author of the 1995 bestseller Being Digital translated into more than forty languages.
