Richard N. Cooper Quotes
Wealth managers not only exploit gaps in legal systems but they also seek to influence legislation, especially in offshore tax havens, to the benefit of their clients. In doing so they preserve and even increase wealth inequality and help undermine the legitimacy of governments that tolerate their wealthy citizens’ evasion or avoidance of the financial responsibilities that every one else must meet—a form of shirking made much easier by modern communications technology.
Richard N. Cooper Economic, Social and Environmental Book Review Section Foreign Affairs November / December 2016
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Reacting to proposals to reduce the capital gains tax:
The President was asked his opinion of his opponents proposal to roll back the large tax cuts that he had passed for wealthy people. Instead of commenting on the societal aspect of the question, he took it from the point of view of the rich.
The tax rates on income from working is much higher than on income generated from money which is invested. The reason for this is that the government wants economic growth and lowering the tax rate on investment profits will produce more investment which theoretically creates more jobs and strengthens the economy. However, most workers have no choice about whether they have to work. Lowering their tax rate will not induce them to work more. This not only produces a patently unfair burden on the worker compared to people who have capital to invest—usually among the wealthiest Americans. Another problem is that there are many forms of investment that does not produce any benefit for the United States. Many people invest in overseas banks, non American companies. These we tax at a low rate and all the benefits of the investment go to the foreign country.
While the majority of the country approve of a financial transaction tax on the stock market, the financial industry has always fought it tooth and nail. It was a long tradition that the Barons and leading aristocrats lands were exempt from the taxes of the king, the most powerful forces in a democracy have lobbied to avoid taxation on their enterprises and finance is one of the very few business areas that have avoided taxation in America. Other than not liking taxes in general, Wall Street and the Banks argue that many financial transactions involve buying and selling securities in huge volume and making a tiny percentage on each share. If there were a tax of even a fraction of one percent, all these profitable trades would become unprofitable. Critics argue that that kind of speculating does not help the economy at all, and is what makes the discriminatory, unfair, computer trading possible and it would be a good reform to make that kind of trading unprofitable as more than 99 percent of the people cannot participate in it nor profit from it.
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..
Richard Newell Cooper was an American economist, policy adviser, and academic.
