Some quotes for Budget Week: ""I’m all for reduction of government expenditures but to anticipate it by reducing the rate of taxation before you have reduced expenditure is a very risky thing to do."

 

Cartoon by Nick Kim

Another Budget Day, another advance auction of stolen goods, another opportunity to post some classic thoughts and quotes on the nature of taxation and over-spending:

“Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.”
    ~ Terry Pratchett

"To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation."
    ~ Jeff Daiell 

"I don't know if I can live on my income or not — the government won't let me try it."
    ~ Bob Thaves

"The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the government will find a way to tax them."
    ~ Anon.

"A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right."
    ~ Anon.

"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilised society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.
    ~ Mark Skousen

“For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.”
    ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 "It's sad to realise that most citizens do not even notice the irony of being bribed with their own money."
    ~ Anon.

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
    ~ Jean Baptiste Colbert 

"There are no taxes which have not a tendency to lessen the power to accumulate. All taxes must either fall on capital or revenue. If they encroach on capital, they must proportionably diminish that fund by whose extent the extent of the productive industry of the country must always be regulated; and if they fall on revenue, they must either lessen accumulation, or force the contributors to save the amount of the tax, by making a corresponding diminution of their former unproductive1 consumption of the necessaries and luxuries of life. Some taxes will produce these effects in a much greater degree than others; but the great evil of taxation is to be found, not so much in any selection of its objects, as in the general amount of its effects taken collectively."

    ~ David Ricardo

"See, when the Government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of Taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs."
    ~ humorist Dave Barry 

"When the ... government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average [workers]."
    ~ Ron Paul

"If taxes and government spending are both slashed, then the salutary result will be to lower the parasitic burden of government taxes and spending upon the productive activities of the private sector."
    ~ Murray Rothbard

"It's not just a case of governments doing more with less. It's about governments doing less with less. When that realisation dawns, we may discover that most things the government can do, we can do better and a whole lot cheaper."
    ~ William Weld

"I’m all for reduction of government expenditures but to anticipate it by reducing the rate of taxation before you have reduced expenditure is a very risky thing to do."
    ~ F.A. Hayek

"The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever-rising tax rates to cover ever-rising spending."
    ~ Thomas Sowell