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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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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Taxes
Cutting
Coolidge
Better
Calvin
Way
Rates
Reagan
Budgets
Lower
Rate

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I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.
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The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.
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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.
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Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.
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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.
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Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.
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Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.
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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.
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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.
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Economics are part of our life. We try to treat them separately, like over there is the economy and here is history. Econ affects history and history often doesn't get it right if it doesn't respect econ.
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Although unions may be good for a worker, singular, they are not always good for workers, plural. Especially when it comes to finding a job.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.
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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.
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Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
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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.
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Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.
Amity Shlaes