Joseph Stiglitz Quotes About Taxes
-
I trace the inequality to a particular set of decisions that we took when we lowered the tax rate from 91% down to very low levels at the top, where we stripped away regulations. So the result of that was not a more dynamic economy, but a more unequal society. We tried the experiment of trickle-down. A third of a century later, we can say fairly definitively that it was a failure.
→ -
Now it is unambiguously clear that trickle-down economics does not work. But what does that mean? That means we have to structure our economic policies to make sure that we have shared prosperity. And you don't do that by giving a tax cut to the big winners and raising taxes on those who have not done very well. Your economic policy has to respond to the way our economic system has been working.
→ -
When you think of policies that are going to address inequality of wealth, you have to be very thoughtful about what economists call "incidence of taxes." If most of the savings is being done by capitalists, and you tax the return on capital, then they will have less to invest. That would mean, over the long run, that the rate of interest would go up. That would therefore undo some of the intent to lower the income of capitalists.
→ -
This Iraq war has been the most "privatized" war in America's history. It has seen the most extensive use of contractors. The contractors have increased the costs; but they have been necessary - the military simply could not have done it on their own. we would have had to increase the size of the military. But the George W. Bush Administration wanted America to believe that it could have a war, essentially for free, without raising taxes, without increasing the size of the armed forces.
→ -
Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.
→
Related Authors
-
Thomas Piketty Economist -
Dani Rodrik Economist -
Paul Samuelson Economist -
Kenneth Arrow Economist -
Kenneth Rogoff Professor -
Nouriel Roubini Economist -
Robert Solow Economist -
Friedrich August von Hayek Economist -
Alan Greenspan Economist -
Lawrence Summers Former Undersecretary for International Affairs -
Jeffrey Sachs Economist -
Amartya Sen Economist -
John Kenneth Galbraith Economist -
John Maynard Keynes Economist -
George Akerlof Economist -
Yanis Varoufakis Finance Minister of Greece -
Milton Friedman Economist -
Greg Mankiw Author -
Paul Krugman Economist -
Bruce Greenwald Professor