National income

“ As the net national income, following the three great factors of all economic production, is divided into three great branches, rent, wages and interest on capital, the net income from any private business may be reduced to one or more of these branches. ”

“ It has taken a largely increasing share of the national income, which of course has been at the expense of other classes of people. This is true of every industry wherein the index of wages is higher than the general economic index unless there has been an offsetting increase in the efficiency of the labor. ”

“ We want to get enough capital and labor at work to give us a total turnover of business, a total national income, of at least eighty billion dollars a year. At that figure we shall have a substantial reduction of unemployment; and the Federal Revenues will be sufficient to balance the current level of cash expenditures on the basis of the existing tax structure. ”

“ First of all, we have the class of small incomes which lie between the manual workers and the income tax payers. We cannot hope, in view of the poverty of the information which our present Census methods place at our disposal, to estimate this part of the national income with any degree of confidence, and we can at best arrive {18} at a rough approximation. ”

“ Increase of production followed by an increased national income has under the present laws—as has been shown in the booming trade of recent years—meant that the rich have become richer. The present income is sufficient to assure the greater health and well-being of the whole population, but the rich must submit to receive a smaller proportion. ”

“ The enormous increase in our national income and our national capital is doubted or denied by no one. Now let us express the increase in income as a supposed increase in the average height of the rooms inhabited by the population. ”

“ There ought normally to be a gradual increase in the proportion of the national income accruing to labor, for as production increases by virtue of improvements in methods, the share of capital being limited by competition, there becomes available a greater dividend for the wage earners ”

“ With full recognition of the roughness of the work in this study, I hold it be sufficient to dispel the idea that something like 65 per cent of the wealth of the United States is owned by less than 2 per cent of the people, and consider that it clears away the seeming paradox between that idea and the established fact that about 70 per cent of the national income, other than agricultural, goes to the wage earners, with only 30 per cent to property and management. ”

“ I recommend that, keeping in view all these considerations, the increasing and unnecessary surplus of national income annually accumulating be released to the people by an amendment to our revenue laws which shall cheapen the price of the necessaries of life and give freer entrance to such imported materials as by American labor may be manufactured into marketable commodities. ”

“ A serious study of the superfluous wastage of the nation might bring reassurance to all who are afraid of an enforced austerity of manners; even if it provides little gratification to those who would see expenditure devoted to desirable ends. Statistics present to the reader incredible arrays of increase: so much leaping forward of income-tax returns, unchecked by wars, borrowings, or trade depressions; nearly two hundred millions of the National Income divided amongst people whose individual incomes exceed five thousand a year. ”

“ National Income — The strong showing of the economy’s productive sector from 1954 to 1957, underlined the general efficacy of the policies and measures implemented by our Administration. Our national income increased at a steady rate from P7 billion in 1953 to P8.3 billion at the end of 1956, a gain of 18.6 per cent. All important sectors of the economy have advanced in this respect: agricultural income rose from P3 billion to P3.3 billion ”

“ We must reduce our deficit financing for economic development. We must exert fresh efforts to increase revenues from new and revised taxes to be returned, as I have said, to our people in the form of public services and wider opportunities for expansion and employment.
OUR ECONOMIC ASSETS
Notwithstanding the grave difficulties encountered last year, this nation has continued to progress in general. Since 1954, the national economy has grown tremendously in volume of physical production. The national income has increased by about six per cent a year during the past five years. ”

“ In the meanwhile, however, we may assume that we now have at least an approximate idea of the national wealth, and a positive idea respecting the national income. These are naturally the fundamental things in any consideration of our national affairs. They are of the nature of a corporation balance sheet and income statement. ”

“ For, taken by itself, the conclusion which has just been stated may strike the reader at first sight as amounting merely to this: that the sum total of the national income will be largest when the most numerous minority of able men produce the largest possible incomes,—incomes which they themselves consume ”

“ If we surmount our current economic difficulties, we can move ahead to a great increase [p.7] in our national income which will enable all our people to enjoy richer and fuller lives.
All of us must advance together. One-fifth of our families now have average annual incomes of less than $850. ”

“ I have hitherto stated that, in my judgment, the expenditures of the national government cannot be cut much below seven billion dollars a year without destroying essential functions or letting people starve. That sum can be raised and will be cheerfully provided by the American people, if we can increase the Nation's income to a point well beyond the present level. ”

“ Such being the case it is of great moment both to exercise care and economy in appropriations, and to scan sharply any change in our fiscal revenue system which may reduce our income. The need of strict economy in our expenditures is emphasized by the fact that we can not afford to be parsimonious in providing for what is essential to our national well-being. Careful economy wherever possible will alone prevent our income from falling below the point required in order to meet our genuine needs. ”

“ Between 1860 and 1864 the taxation of the country was reduced by twelve millions, the National Debt by eleven millions, and the nation's income increased by twenty-seven millions, while foreign trade had risen in two years by seventy-seven millions. ”

“ Suppose that a number of foreigners with large incomes arrive in a country, and there expend those incomes: will this operation be beneficial, as respects the national wealth, to the country which receives these immigrants? Yes, say many political economists, if they save any part of their incomes, and employ them reproductively; because then an addition is made to the national capital, and the produce is a clear increase of the national wealth. But if the foreigner expends all his income unproductively, it is no benefit to the country, say they, and for the following reason. ”

“ First is growth--the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress.
I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already--in every city and countryside. This Nation is flourishing.
Workers are making more money than ever--with after-tax income in the past 5 years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent.
More people are working than ever before in our history--an increase last year of 2 1/2 million jobs.
Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. ”

“ The third is to raise the purchasing power of the Nation to the point that the taxes on this purchasing power—or, in other words, on the Nation's income—will be sufficient to meet the necessary expenditures of the national government. ”

“ Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget, by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt, church funds and soldier’s pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances for washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.) ”

“ This involves the questions of distribution of sources of revenue and elasticity of income.
The separation of government into national and local authorities, with the interposition of a third class of regional authorities in the case of Federal States, brings with it a division of expenditures and the need of adequate revenues for each form of government. The ideal of independence in action within their several fields can only be realized when to each are assigned certain independent sources of revenue. Without such revenues these authorities become mere disbursing offices lacking vitality. ”

“ But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. ”

“ Anyone who infringes upon a citizen's person and causes him physical injury shall pay his medical expenses and his loss in income due to missed working time and shall pay him living subsidies if he is disabled ”

“ A citizen's personal property shall include his lawfully earned income, housing, savings, articles for daily use, objects d'art, books, reference materials, trees, livestock, as well as means of production the law permits a citizen to possess and other lawful property. A citizen's lawful property shall be protected by law, and no organization or individual may appropriate, encroach upon, destroy or illegally seal up, distrain, freeze or confiscate it. ”

“ I grant, then, that the remission of the assessed taxes might be productive of great individual benefit; I allow that it would be beneficial to individuals, that they should have so much more income at their own free disposal; and I am ready further to allow, that the expenditure of this income would, in particular instances, create a great extra demand for labour and commodities. But this is not the whole question.—Would the demand for commodities and labour, looking to the community at large, be increased? ”

“ If it be true, as indicated in our Lesson on the Productive Process, that the legitimate activities of Government belong in the Wealth production category as a Labor factor, then the Economically legitimate income of Government, whether through Taxation or otherwise, would seem to belong to the Distributive category of Wages. ”

“ For more than a decade, the National Government borrowed and spent, raised taxes on the middle class, reduced the burden on the privileged, ran up the huge national debt we now have, and discouraged the creation of jobs by reducing our investment. ”

“ Moneyed property, the profits of trade and manufacturers, are now a vast proportion of the income of the inhabitants of this country, and the persons deriving income from these sources bear that proportion only of the public burdens which are taxes on expenditure; while the income derived from land maintains the Church, the poor, the roads, the administration of justice, etc., etc., to a vast amount, and pays at the same time all taxes on expenditure; and the direct burdens on land increase with the riches produced by trade and manufactures, and the moneyed property. ”

“ By its sovereign power over the citizens, the State seems to be in a position to take all it wants. This has led to the hypothesis laid down by certain writers that in private economy expenditure is measured by income, but in the economy of the State income is measured by expenditure. The epigrammatic statement is wholly true, since among individuals expenditures are made by inroads upon capital when income does not suffice, while in the State expenditures are sometimes curtailed and more frequently postponed for lack of sufficient income. ”

“ But unlike the 1980's, when the rich paid less and the middle class paid more, we're asking the wealthy to pay their fair share to give the middle class a fair shake. Seventy-five percent of the taxes are paid by those in the upper 6 percent of income brackets, those who exceed $100,000 in annual income. ”

“ These loans, being drawn from capital (in lieu of taxes, which would generally have been paid from income, and made up in part or altogether by increased economy) must, according to the principles we have laid down, tend to impoverish the country: yet the years in which expenditure of this sort has been on the greatest scale, have often been years of great apparent prosperity: the wealth and resources of the country, instead of diminishing, have given every sign of rapid increase during the process, and of greatly expanded dimensions after its close. ”

“ In such countries, the government may take any moderate portion of the capital of the country and expend it as revenue, without affecting the national wealth: the whole being either drawn from that portion of the annual savings which would otherwise be sent abroad, or being subtracted from the unproductive expenditure of individuals for the next year or two, since every million spent makes room for another million to be saved before reaching the overflowing point. ”

“ What is at stake is 7 years of unparalleled prosperity. In those 7 years, the real income of the average American, after taxes, rose by almost 30 percent - a gain as large as that of the entire preceding 19 years. ”