This post is a list of quotes outlining my beliefs about fiscal policy. There are 29 quotes divided into 7 sections:
A. Government finance should be audited to ensure money is spent efficiently (3)
B. We should invest in building a strong middle class (5)
C. We should support our most vulnerable citizens (4)
D. Single-payer healthcare is the best healthcare solution (5)
E. We should accelerate innovation in critical technologies (4)
F. Foreign aid is an effective foreign policy (5)
G. Raising taxes on rich individuals will not significantly hurt economic growth (3)
A. Government finance should be audited to ensure money is spent efficiently
Henry George (1839-1897, economist)
1. "To prevent government from being corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible... and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people as directly within their control as may be." (Social Problems, 1883)
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941, lawyer)
2. "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial disease. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." (Other People's Money - And How Bankers Use It, 1914)
James Madison (1751-1836, 4th President of the United States)
3. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." (Federalist No. 51, 1788)
B. We should invest in building a strong middle class
Barack Obama (1961-now, 44th President of the United States):
4. "We don't just want everyone to share in America's success, we want everyone to contribute to our success." (State of the Union Address, 2015)
Barack Obama (1961-now, 44th President of the United States):
5. "In a global economy, a country's greatest resource is its people. So by investing in you, this nation can open the door for far more prosperity - because unlocking a nation's potential depends on empowering all its people, especially it's young people." (Yangon University Speech, 2012)
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
6. "According to a 2007 report by the Federal Revere Bank of Minneapolis, 'The most efficient means to boost the productivity of the workforce 15 to 20 years down the road is to invest in today's youngest children.'" (Our Revolution, 2016)
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
7. "Today in America, hundreds of thousands of bright young people who have the desire and the ability to get a college education will not be able to do so because their families lack the money." (Our Revolution, 2016)
Arthur MacEwan (1942-now, economist):
8. "It's not hard to figure out what kinds of jobs should be created with government stimulus spending. Prime examples include environmental repair and preservation, education and training and infrastructure repair and extension." (What Would Full Employment Cost? 2015)
C. We should support our most vulnerable citizens
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
9. "[A nation] is judged by how well it treats its weakest a most vulnerable citizens. A truly great nation is one that is filled with compassion and solidarity." (Our Revolution, 2016)
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
10. "When people become old, they often become frail and sick. They are unable to work and earn an income. In a civilized society, the older generation - the people who raised us - are entitled, and allowed, to live out their remaining years in dignity and security." (Our Revolution, 2016)
Hillary Clinton (1947-now, politician):
11. "Look at the budget that was just proposed in Washington. It is an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest, and hard working people who need a little help to gain or hang on to a decent middle class life." (Wellesley commencement speech, 2017)
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
12. "Study after study has shown that without stable housing it is much harder for working people to hold down jobs and get the health care they need, and children are put at a profound disadvantage in terms of intellectual and emotional development and school performance... Decent-quality affordable housing should be a right of all Americans." (Our Revolution, 2016)
D. Single-payer healthcare is the best healthcare solution
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
13. "The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to every man, woman and child through a Medicare for all single-payer system." (Our Revolution, 2016)
American Medical Student Association:
14. "If Americans believe in an inalienable right to life, how can we tolerate a system that denies people lifesaving medications and treatments?" (The Case for Universal Healthcare, 2009)
Commonwealth Fund:
15. "Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives...'" (US Health System Ranks Last Among Eleven Countries, 2014)
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
16. "The United States has thousands of different health insurance plans, all of which set different reimbursement rates across different networks for providers and procedures. This results in extremely high administrative costs." (Our Revolution, 2016)
Robert Frank (journalist):
17. "The most important source of cost savings under single-payer is that large government entities are able to negotiate much more favorable terms with service providers." (Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money, 2017)
E. We should accelerate innovation in critical technologies
Bernie Sanders (1941-now, politician):
18. "This is the stuff we do so well when challenged as a nation, whether by putting a man on the moon, eradicating diseases, or developing the Internet. The U.S. can and must dedicate our engineering know-how to a clean energy revolution, in our universities, in our national energy labs, and in businesses and communities all across the country." (Our Revolution, 2016)
Bill Gates (1955-now, businessman):
19. "The only reason I'm optimistic about [renewable energy] is because of innovation... I want to tilt the odds in our favor by driving innovation at an unnaturally high pace, or more than its current business-as-usual course." (We Need an Energy Miracle, 2015)
Bill Nye (1955-now, science communicator):
20. "Desalination of water could be the key to the future for so may of us humans... We could have all the clean water we wanted for everybody all over the world and we would power pumps with solar power..." (Big Think: Can We Desalinate Water for Human Consumption on a Massive Scale? 2016)
Annie Sneed (journalist):
21. "To limit warming, nations will also likely need to physically remove carbon from the atmosphere. And to do that, they will have to deploy 'negative emissions technology' - technologies that scrub CO2 out of the air." (The Search Is on for Pulling Carbon from the Air, 2016)
F. Foreign aid is an effective foreign policy
Tessie San Martin (nonprofit executive):
22. "Without reliable data we have no way of understanding the magnitude of a problem or evaluating whether and how our programming is helping to address it." (Amen to accountability in foreign aid, 2017)
Mala Yousafzai (1997-now, activist):
23. "Why is it that countries which we call 'strong' are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?" (Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 2014)
Max Friedman (historian):
24. "Exclusion from economic gains, making individuals believe that elites are not sharing revenue, may also be another significant factor driving extremism." (Why Current Foreign Aid Benefits Terrorists, 2017)
Kofi Annan (1938-now, 7th Secretary-General for the United Nations):
25. "The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people - almost half of all humanity - to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth." (Can Globalization Really Solve Our Problems? 2002)
Jimmy Carter (1924-now, 39th President of the United States):
26. "Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood." (Remarks on the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1978)
G. Raising taxes on rich individuals will not significantly hurt economic growth
Thomas Hungerford (economist)
27. "The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth [in the United States]. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie." (Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, 2012)
Alana Semuels (journalist):
28. "[In the United States] between 1935 and 1982, the top tax rate did not dip below 70 percent. Part of this was due to a belief among those in charge that government had a role in combating extreme wealth." (Is the U.S. Due for Radically Raising Taxes for the Rich? 2016)
Thomas Hungerford (economist)
29. "The top marginal rate in the 1950s was over 90 percent and the real GDP growth rate averaged 4.2 percent and the real per capita GDP increased annually by 2.4 percent in the 1950s." (Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, 2012)
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