Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Your profits are going to be cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation. Your income will be subject to higher taxes. Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Message to Congress on the National Economic Policy." The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume 11: Humanity on the Defensive, 1942, compiled by Samuel I. Rosenman, Harper & Brothers, 1950, p. 220.
This is an excellent historical quotations showing how our government financed the Spanish American War. Wars have always placed economic stress on the nations which wage then. In the American Revolution we borrowed from individuals and from France. After that all our wars were financed by a combination of war bond sales, other borrowing, and tax increases—all except the George W, Bush Afghanistan and Iraq Wars which were not funded thus complicating an economic crises caused by Bush’s Great Recession. While some critics saw Bush’s actions as reprehensible and irresponsible—it was the only time in American history where tax rates were cut in wartime, Bush’s team had a plan. They had an ideological point of view that said that major tax cuts would spur the economy and lead to MORE government revenue as a result of the growth that would come. However, in this case there not only was no growth, but there was the worst recession in American History. But there was a plan to finance the war—it just went awry.
FDR’s attempt to cap WWII income with any excess going to pay for the war failed as the wealthy in the country pulled out “all the stops” to defeat the proposal. Roosevelt was able, however, to get a maximum tax bracket of 88 percent on all income over $200,000 which was less onerous to the very rich but still terrible. They could not defeat that proposal.
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..
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended shortly after he died in office.
