Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
Interpretation
Higher taxes do not solve government deficits, as spending continues regardless of tax revenue.
Milton Friedman argues that increasing taxes does not necessarily lead to a reduction in governmental deficits, as governments tend to spend all of their revenue and often more. This suggests that merely raising taxes might not lead to improved fiscal responsibility, as it does not inherently alter the spending habits of governments.
In practice
Discussing fiscal policy changes in a public forum.
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
This is the paradox of thrift: belt-tightening causes people to lose their jobs, because other people are not buying what they produce, so their debt burden rises rather than falls.
Budget consolidation and economic growth are two sides of the same coin.
We can fight the global economy with a strong local economy.
Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth?
The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That's quite clear.
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