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Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Straight
Taxes
Cutting
Didn
Econ
Thought
Coolidge
Also
Budget
Virtuous
Budgets

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Fame is worth less than service.
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With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.
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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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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.
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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.
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Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.
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Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.
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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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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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I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.
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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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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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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.
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The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
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To investors, job creation is a second-order effect. Market participants care first about interest rates, exchange rates, bond prices and the one great factor that affects all three: the long-term solvency of a bond company called the U.S. government.
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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