“I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence... I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich.” ThinkingHas BeensWarAmericaBlackPresidentCommunityWhitePovertyRichCuttingTaxesResourcesAssumingUrbanTax CutsRural Communities Author:Charles Rangel
“[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.” YearsWellsMayLittlesWarSchoolLawTurnsPrayerEffortLeaderPovertySupportEconomicCenturyTaxesGunLaborReformAccomplishmentRegulationSixtyEstatesBankingTwentieth CenturyWilsonLandmarksBacklashProgressivismTheodoreWar On PovertyDustbinLabor LawsEconomic ReformsEstate Taxes Author:Thomas Frank
“The tax rate increases reduce economic growth; they shrink the pie; they cause more poverty, more despair, more unemployment, which are all things government is trying to alleviate with spending.” TryingGovernmentCausesGrowthPovertyEconomicTaxesDespairAll ThingsIncreaseRateSpendingPieUnemploymentShrinksEconomic GrowthAlleviate Author:Arthur Laffer
“There's 6 million people living in poverty today, more than when Barack Obama got elected. 6.5 million people are working part-time, most of whom want to work full-time. We've created rules and taxes on top of every aspiration of people, and the net result is we're not growing fast, income is not growing.” PeopleWantTodayResultsPovertyMillionsGrowingTaxesIncomeBarackAspirationPart TimePoverty Today Author:Jeb Bush
“If I were an immigrant Latino not born in the US, I could not have written Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of America book. And that is because many of the Whitopians would not have been comfortable talking about their views on immigration, talking about their views on taxes. And they wouldn't have spilled to me the new script on race and poverty as they did.” IfsHeartHas BeensBookAmericaBornViewsRaceTalkingPovertyWrittenJourneyTaxesComfortableScriptsImmigrationImmigrantsLatino Author:Richard Benjamin
“President Lyndon Johnson's administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama's will become notable for his War on Prosperity. We're speaking, of course, of Obama's plans to hike income taxes on the most wealthy 2 or 3 percent of the nation. He's not just raising the top rate to 39.6 percent; he's also disallowing about one-third of top earner's deductions, whether for state and local taxes, charitable contributions or mortgage interest. This is an effective hike in their taxes by an average of about 20 percent.” WarStatesCoursesNationsPresidentInterestKnownPovertyPlansTaxesPercentThirdsRateAverageProsperityIncomeLocalsAdministrationContributionWealthyPresident ObamaJohnsonNotableMortgageIncome TaxCharitableDeductionsWar On PovertyPresident Lyndon Johnson Author:Dick Morris
“Liberals cling to the idea that critics of welfare are motivated by greed or callous disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, during the twenty-five years that followed Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war on poverty, U.S. tax payers spent $3 trillion providing every conceivable support for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Private foundations spent scores of billions more, and private and religious charities even more. Nevertheless, as Ronald Raegan later quipped, 'in the war on poverty, poverty won.'” YearsIdeasWarFactsReligiousPoorPovertySupportFiveTaxesTwentiesFoundationCharityCriticsGreedBillionsFortunateWelfareFive YearsScoreMotivatedProvidingNeverthelessDeclarationElderlyJohnsonDisregardTwenty FiveCallousLess FortunateWar On PovertyDeclaration Of War Book:Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us Source: Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help and the Rest of Us
“The failure of the first Barack Obama administration to really deliver on a new War on Poverty and a new language to explain these societal challenges in some ways provided the fuel that led to the Occupy Movement a few years later. And, while Occupy was a somewhat transitory phenomenon, many of the activist groups that emerged during this period are still out there, and still working on reshaping the political debate around taxes, around welfare, around government assistance to the poor, around debt relief for students, and so on.” WarPoliticalLanguageChallengesPoorPovertyStudentsTaxesDebateBarackWelfarePhenomenonActivistWar On Poverty Author:Sasha Abramsky
“You can't lift people out of poverty simply by tweaking the tax system, or by raising the minimum wage by a few cents, or by reducing student debt slightly. These might be necessary components of a larger anti-poverty program, but you have to accept they are pieces of a much larger puzzle.” PeopleAcceptingPovertyStudentsTaxesProgramPuzzles Author:Sasha Abramsky
“To really tackle poverty, politicians, activists, academics will all have to think outside their boxes, will have to start developing much more integrated approaches to these problems. And a large part of this will involve working out ways to push for living wages. Partly this will involve re-empowering the union movement, which has been massively weakened in recent decades. Partly it will involve a willingness to restructure tax codes to penalize companies that don't provide basic benefits and decent wages to employees.” ThinkingProblemPovertyPoliticianTaxesWork OutCodeDecentEmployeeWillingnessActivistIntegrated Author:Sasha Abramsky
“The poverty we see in America is now too widespread, and too complex, for easy fixes. But I do think we can reimagine many of our institutions and can create new ones in ways that would be effective. We could, for example, create social insurance systems, similar to social security, such as that we went through in 2008-9. We could create a financial transaction tax, oil profit taxes and a fairer estate tax system, and we could plow much of the revenue raised from these into job training programs, into better education infrastructure, into an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit.” ThinkingEasyPovertySecurityTaxesTrainingProgramFinancialIncome Tax Author:Sasha Abramsky
“To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.” PeopleMotivationChoicesPovertyFitTaxesPatrioticLoaded Book:Collected Writings Source: Collected Writings