the people is always rich and, financially speaking, all is well.
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762). copy citation

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Author Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Source The Social Contract
Topic
Date 1762
Language English
Reference Of the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Law, Book III
Note Translated by George Douglas Howard Cole
Weblink https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract/Book_III

Context

“The charge should be measured not by the amount of the impositions, but by the path they have to travel in order to get back to those from whom they came. When the circulation is prompt and well-established, it does not matter whether much or little is paid; the people is always rich and, financially speaking, all is well. On the contrary, however little the people gives, if that little does not return to it, it is soon exhausted by giving continually: the State is then never rich, and the people is always a people of beggars.” source