Michael Hudson Quotes About Taxes

Quotes about: Taxes

• So the Bush-Obama administration has taken a fiscal stance diametrically opposed to that of the patron saint of free enterprise. While escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried. By shifting the tax burden off property and off rent-seeking monopolies - above all, off the financial sector - this policy has raised America's cost of living and doing business, thereby undercutting its competitive power and running up larger and larger foreign debt.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Military, War

  "Adam Smith Critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission". Personal website, michael-hudson.com. December 06, 2010.

• From 2008 to 2016 all the growth in the American economy, all the growth in national income, was earned just by the wealthiest 5% of the population. So they got all the growth. 95% of the population didn't grow. If you can get a flat tax or other lower tax, as Trump is suggesting, then this richest 5% will be able to keep even more money. That means that the 95% will be even poorer than they were before, relative to the very top.

  Michael Hudson

  Mean, Growth, Population

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The worst loophole is what Donald Trump has talked about: the tax deductibility of interest. If you let real estate owners or corporate raiders borrow the money to buy a property or company, and then pay interest to the bondholders, you'll load the company you take over with debt. But you don't have to pay taxes on the profits that you pay out in this way. You can deduct the interest from your tax liability.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Pay, Way

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Trump's junk economics is the illusion that if we cut the taxes on the wealthiest brackets, it'll all trickle down. But it doesn't trickle down.

  Michael Hudson

  Cutting, Junk, Illusion

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Trump has said that he wants to remove the tax deductibility of interest. If he can do that, fine. But I hope that Trump knows that it's not the President that sets tax policy. It's Congress.

  Michael Hudson

  President, Want, Said

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• What do the 5%, or the 1% actually use their money for? They lend it back to the economy at large, they load it down with debt. They make their money by lending to the bottom 95%, or the bottom 99%. When you give them more after-tax income, it enables them to buy even more control of government, even more control of election campaigns. They're not going to spend this money back into the goods-and-services economy.

  Michael Hudson

  Government, Giving, Income

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• So, what people are actually left with to spend is maybe 25 to 30% of their income on goods and services, after paying taxes and after paying the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate). Whether it's housing insurance or mortgage insurance. So there's an idea of distracting people. Don't think of your condition. Think of how the overall economy is doing. But don't think of the economy as an overall unit. Think of the stock market as the economy. Think of the rich people as the economy. Look at the yachts that are made. Somebody's living a lot better. Couldn't it be you?

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Thinking, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In real estate you can avoid ever having to pay a capital gains tax, decade after decade, century after century. When you sell a property and make a capital gain, you simply turn around and buy a new property. The gain is not taxed. It's called "preserving your capital investment" - which goes up and up in value with each transaction.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Pay, Gains

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called "unproductive activity."

  Michael Hudson

  Support, Today, Financial

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think something like three-quarters of American currency is held abroad, by drug dealers, by tax evaders, Russians and Chinese. Other people think that they want to protect themselves against their own currency going down. When you have 75% of the currency and even more of the high-denomination $100 bills held abroad, you wonder whether these are people we really want to pay. If you get rid of the $100 bills, its foreign holders will be the main losers.

  Michael Hudson

  Thinking, People, Drug

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• If you're a wealthy heir with a trust fund, and you sell stocks, make your 10% gains since Donald Trump, and then you buy other stocks, you can avoid paying taxes. And if your accountant registers your wealth offshore in a Panamanian fund, like Russian kleptocrats do - and as more and more Americans do - you don't have to pay any tax at all, because it's not American income, it's foreign income in an enclave without an income tax.

  Michael Hudson

  Income, Paying Taxes, Heirs

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Income is sucked upward to the creditors, who then foreclose on the assets of debtors. This shrinks tax revenue, forcing public budgets into deficit. And when governments are indebted, they becomemore subject to pressure to privatization of public enterprise.

  Michael Hudson

  Taxes, Enterprise

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• You have to abolish pension plans. You have to abolish social spending. You have to raise taxes. You have to have at least fifty percent of the European population emigrate, either to Russia or China. You would have to have mass starvation. Very simple. That's the price that the Eurozone thinks is well worth paying.

  Michael Hudson

  Simple, Thinking, Pension Plans

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The biggest industrial sector next to real estate is oil, gas and other mineral resources. They don't report any taxable income, because if you depict yourself as earning a profit, you have to pay a tax on it. So, it's all about what accountants choose to declare as profit.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Oil, Income

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The current U.S. and Eurozone depression isn't because of China. It's because of domestic debt deflation. Commodity prices and consumer spending are falling, mainly because consumers have to pay most of their wages to the FIRE sector for rent or mortgage payments, student loans, bank and credit card debt, plus over 15 percent FICA wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare actually, to enable the government to cut taxes on the higher income brackets, as well income and sales taxes.

  Michael Hudson

  Fall, Cutting, Students

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• If you want to see where Trump is moving, look at what the United States neoliberals advised Russia to do after 1991, when they promised to create an ideal economy. Russia was under the impression that the neoliberal advisors were going to make Russia as rich as the United States. What they really did was create a kleptocracy that was virtually tax-free.

  Michael Hudson

  Moving, Russia, United States

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Textbooks don't teach people how to avoid paying any income tax. But that's what an army of tax lawyers and corporate tax accountants do.

  Michael Hudson

  Army, People, Income

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• I think the Republican tax law is so bad that it almost guarantees a Republican victory, precisely because it's so bad. The seeming irony is that it's so bad that it enables the Democratic Party to think, "A-ha, all we have to do is be the lesser evil.

  Michael Hudson

  Party, Thinking, Evil

• On the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.

  Michael Hudson

  Pyramids, Income, Flat Tax

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Trump's claims that he's making taxes more democratic for the people, but it actually is a vast sucking of income and wealth upward.

  Michael Hudson

  People, Income, Wealth

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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