“Campaign finance reform was the subject of..."

“Campaign finance reform was the subject of fierce debate in America not long ago.  Yet the debate missed the point.  As long as we have a government that can exploit peaceful, hardworking Americans on behalf of special interests, as long as it can make or break any American business with (for example) tax policy, politically motivated antitrust prosecutions, and ill-considered regulation, and in general as long as economic winners and losers can be determined in Washington, people will want to assure their share of the loot by influencing the political process through money.  Campaign finance reform focuses on the system rather than the cause. 

This is one reason I was so skeptical when friends urged me to run for president.  There are fore more interest groups lobbying in Washington for special benefits and privileges than most Americans can imagine.  I do not oppose just this one or that one.  I oppose the whole apparatus, the whole immoral system by which we use government to exploit our fellow citizens on behalf of our own interests.  For someone like me to win, there would have to be enough Americans who believed in freedom to be able to offset the combined power of interest groups that have grown accustomed to treating the people as a resource to be drained for private gain.  Were there really enough people for that task?” -Pages 106 & 107 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Congress has changed American tax laws for the...."

"Congress has changed American tax laws for the sole reason that the World Trade Organization decided that our rules unfairly impacted the European Union.  I recall a congressional session in which, with hundreds of tax bills languishing in the House Ways and Means Committee, the one bill drafted strictly to satisfy the WTO was brought to the floor and passed with great urgency.

In one case, the WTO sided with the Europeans against American tax law, which offered tax breaks to American companies doing business overseas.  According to the European Union, the Foreign Sales Corporation program, established under President Reagan in 1984, is now an "illegal subsidy," a view that a WTO appellate panel shared  The WTO's Orwellian ruling declared that allowing a company to keep more of its own money through lower taxes was a "subsidy."  As a matter of fact, the program was moreover really just compensating (and only partially at that) for unfair U.S. taxes on corporations for profits earned overseas, a disability that our foreign competitors do not have to confront from their own governments. 

What this means, in plain English, was that high-tax Europe, upset at lower-tax America, decided that the way to level the playing field was to force America to raise her taxes.  Pascal Lamy, the trade czar of the European Union, actually visited with influential members of Congress in order to determine whether a new tax bill was being crafted to his satisfaction.   If Mr. Lamy, a member of the French Socialist Party, had been unsatisfied with the changes made to our tax code, he threatened to unleash a European trade war against U.S. imports.  In effect he was a foreign bureaucrat acting as a shadow legislator by intervening in our lawmaking process.  And to no one's surprise, Congress raced to comply with the WTO ruling that American tax rules must be changed in order to bring them in to harmony with "international law." -Pages 97 & 98 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago..."

"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago, when the federal government was far smaller than it is today, people were much poorer and worked in less desirable conditions, while today, with a much larger federal government and far more regulation in place, people are much more prosperous.  This is a classic case of the post hoc, ergo proper hoc fallacy.  This fallacy is committed whenever we carelessly assume that because outcome B occurred after action A, then B was caused by A.  If people are more prosperous today, that must be because government saved them from the ravages of the free market. 

But that is nonsense.  Of course people were less prosperous a hundred years ago, but not for the reason fashionable opinion assumes.  Compared to today, the American economy was starved for capital.  The economy's productive capacity was miniscule by today's standards, and therefore very few goods per capita could be produced.  The vast bulk of the population had to make do with much less than we take for granted today because so little could be produced.  All the laws and regulations in the world cannot overcome constraints imposed by reality itself.  No matter how much we tax the rich to redistribute the wealth, in a capital-starved economy there is an extremely limited amount of wealth to redistribute. 

The only way to increase everyone's standard of living is by increasing the amount of capital per worker.  Additional capital makes workers more productive, which means they can produce more goods than before. When our economy becomes physically capable of producing vastly more goods, their abundance makes them more affordable in terms of dollars (if the Federal Reserve isn't inflating the money supply).  Soaking the rich works for only so long:  the rich eventually wise up and decide to hide their income, move away or stop working so much.  But investing in capital makes everyone better off.  It is the only way we can all become wealthier.  We are wealthier today because our economy is physically capable of producing so much more at far lower costs.  And that's why, just from a practical point of view, it is foolish to levy taxes along any step of this process, because doing so sabotages the only way wealth can be created for everyone."  -Pages 93 & 94 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The kind of spending cuts we obviously need..."

"The kind of spending cuts we obviously need will not be easy, since our government has encouraged so many Americans to become dependent on federal programs.  These programs cannot survive much longer without a financial collapse.  Our national debt, now nine trillion dollars, does not include the unfunded liabilities to programs like Social Security and Medicare that will come due in the coming decades to the tune of another $50 trillion.  It is simply impossible to fulfill those promises.  The level of taxation necessary to fund a figure like that would destroy the American economy and dramatically shrink the productive base from which those funds could be drawn."  -Page 82 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Now, plenty of politicians talk a good game..."

"Now, plenty of politicians talk a good game about low taxes, and some even claim to want to decrease spending as well.  Few seem to mean it, if their voting records are any indication.  But if we want more economic freedom and a healthy and robust economy, serious inroads need to be made into federal spending.  Otherwise, tax cuts will simply lead to more borrowing, more inflation, and the continued decline of the dollar.  As I write [2008], we are paying about $1.4 billion every day just for the interest on the national debt.  Because our government refuses to live within its means, every single day we spend $1.4 billion and receive absolutely nothing in return." -Pages 80 & 81 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"With a consensus not yet established...."

"With a consensus not yet established behind the abolition of the income tax (although I have never ceased voting and speaking on behalf of such an outcome), I have done my best to eliminate income and other taxation in as many specific cases as possible, in order at least to make dents in the edifice in the meantime.  For instance, I have proposed, for all those whose income consists largely of tips, that income in the form of tips be exempt from income taxation.  I have proposed that America's teachers be granted tax credits, thereby increasing their salaries.  I have proposed that people with terminal illnesses be exempt from Social Security taxes while they struggle for their lives.  (There is surely no moral justification for taxing people who are trying to maintain their very lives.)" -Page 79 of The Revolution, A Manifesto