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Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Vote
Pay
Everybody
Taxes

More quotes by Amity Shlaes

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Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.
Amity Shlaes
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I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.
Amity Shlaes
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We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
Amity Shlaes
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There's something unsettling about the education of a child who comfortably enumerates the rules for surviving zombie apocalypse but finds it uncomfortable to enumerate the rules of his grandparents' faith, if he knows them.
Amity Shlaes
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Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.
Amity Shlaes
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The donning of the ear buds marks the beginning of teen life, when children set off on their own for the passage through adolescence.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.
Amity Shlaes
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If Coolidge were a stock, he'd be a buy. The experts have historically ranked Coolidge in the bottom quartile or bottom half of all presidents. But his economic performance and his statesmanship suggest Coolidge belongs in the top quarter of presidents. The disparity between the Coolidge price and Coolidge value is huge. So revision is warranted.
Amity Shlaes
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People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.
Amity Shlaes
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The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job depression is when I lose mine.
Amity Shlaes
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In a way, Calvin Coolidge is better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.
Amity Shlaes
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The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge and his treasury secretary Mellon loved new technology. Like JFK, C.C. divined that a new technology could lift the nation out of its doldrums the only difference was that JFK's new technology was space travel, and Coolidge's travel by airplane.
Amity Shlaes
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The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
Amity Shlaes
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Right now we're concerned about budget. Right now we're concerned about the prospect of interest rate rise. We're concerned about government corruption, government handing out deals to specific groups. Coolidge fixed a problem like that. He came into a rough time and he, and Harding before him, fixed that by budgeting.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge's stat was so low he's ranked in the bottom half of presidents. What I found when I encountered this man was the leader I might like to see today.
Amity Shlaes
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Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents - Nixon, Ike, and Reagan - you see them failing on this score.
Amity Shlaes
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Fame is worth less than service.
Amity Shlaes