"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...
[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers...
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery...
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations."
~ Adam Smith
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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2 comments:
Here's another from the sage of Edinburgh:
“The practice of funding (borrowing) has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it. When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The raising of the denomination of the coin has been the most usual expedient by which a real public bankruptcy has been disguised under the appearance of a pretended payment.”
(Ie., crank up the printing press at the Treasury Dept.)
Maggie,
The problem with the Adam Smith quote is that it does not take into consideration the obstruction, ridicule, and punishment that the Federal government appears to be capable of placing in the way of individuals.
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